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MY OWN STORY 



MY OWN STORY 

WITH RECOLLECTIONS OF 
NOTED PERSONS 

BY 

JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE 

ILLUSTRATED 

Ne cede malis. — Heraldic Motto. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

<&bt fitoetjjibe pte$$> Camfcri&ge 

1903 



THE LItiRARY OF 
CONbrtfcSS, 

Two Copies Received 

SEP 15 »903 

Copvugnt Entry 

CLASS Ct Wc No 

COPY B. 



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COPYRIGHT 1902, I903, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

COPYRIGHT 1903, BY JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published September, igoj 



FOREWARNING 

The significance of the saying (Carlyle's, is it 
not ?) that the story of any man's life would have 
interest and value, if truly told, is recognized, I 
think, by the most of us ; yet each is apt to 
fancy at least one exception to the rule, namely, 
his own particular life. This certainly was the 
case with myself, even up to the time when I 
was induced — reluctantly for that reason — to 
undertake these memoirs. I have therefore 
been not a little surprised at the manner in 
which the chapters that appeared in recent num- 
bers of the Atlantic Monthly have been received, 
and can only attribute it to whatever success I 
may have had in fulfilling the condition that 
points the saying. 

Yet that the story I tell is not the bare, 
absolute, unveiled verity I hasten to avow, in the 
interest of the truth which I believe in and would 



vi FOREWARNING 

sincerely serve. Under the purest tones of the 
violin, persists ever the dry, dreary, accompany- 
ing sound of the friction of the bow upon the 
strings ; the player hears it, as likewise do any 
of his auditors who chance to be too near the 
instrument ; but it is properly no part of the 
performance, and will not, if he is skilled, mar 
his musical numbers. Alas, if he be not skilled ! 

Skilled or otherwise, I have endeavored to 
hold my audience at a little distance. While 
aiming always at entire fidelity to the main and 
minor facts of my record, I have kept out of it 
as much as possible the ennuis and annoyances, 
the errors and heartaches, of which my life has 
doubtless been no freer than yours who peruse 
these pages, if as free. I say this especially to 
dispel the illusion in which some, I find, have 
followed the published magazine chapters, — that, 
in respect to discouragements and failures, human 
ills and frailties, mine has been an exception to 
the common lot. Strange illusion indeed ! 

I desire also to correct a quite different 
impression, derived from the same source, that I 



FOREWARNING vii 

have lived what in these later years is termed a 
" strenuous life." I do not greatly believe in the 
strenuous life for myself, much as I may admire 
it in another, and I had no idea that I was living it 
in the periods of struggle and not over-successful 
achievement I have portrayed. Our strivings after 
better things than wealth and power and display, 
even for complex intellectual acquirements and 
the accomplishment of the worthiest aims, may 
be too incessant and intense, and dry up in us 
the springs of spirit they should feed. We do not 
often enough rest in the divine passivity that heals 
the hurts of time and is the restoring bath of our 
being. Not that I would counsel a purposeless 
drifting, while choice of direction is left us, with 
strength of arm for the oar. Only dreams come to 
us in our sleep Not alone the great prizes of life, 
but often the mind's solace and the body's health, 
wait upon work. The world is for endeavor; the 
world is the flint, the will of man the steel. 

The heraldic motto on the title-page of these 
reminiscences (given also on a later page with its 
context in the Sibyl's charge to ^Eneas) is in 



viii FOREWARNING 

reality the motto of the Trowbridge coat of 
arms. The coat of arms I have no special inter- 
est or pride in, but the motto I deem worthy to 
be prized, to be cited, and to shape one's life by. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. A Backwoods Boyhood i 

II. Starting out in the World ... 62 

III. First Experiences as a Writer ... 89 

IV. Early Years in Boston 134 

V. Friends and First Books 175 

VI. The Writing of Neighbor Jackwood . 211 
VII. Underwood, Lowell, and The Atlantic 

Monthly 233 

VIII. Cudjo's Cave and Other War Stories — A 

New Home 259 

IX. The South after the War . . . .271 

X. Our Young Folks and Books for the Young 317 

XL Recollections of Emerson and Alcott . 335 
XII. Walt Whitman — with Glimpses of Chase 

and O'Connor 360 

XIII. Oliver Wendell Holmes 402 

XIV. Longfellow 418 

XV. Closing Numbers 451 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

John Townsend Trowbridge . . Frontispiece 
From a photograph by Litchfield. 

Birthplace of J. T. Trowbridge 10 ^ 

Showing the out-door oven and the Rochester road. 
Drawn by Charles Copeland, from descriptions ftir- 
nished by the Author, and by the Author's eldest sis- 
ter, Mrs. Greene. 
Rebecca Willey Trowbridge (the Author's Mother) 

at the age of 58 60 

From a daguerreotype. 

Major Mordecai M. Noah 98 

Redrawn from a middle-age p07'trait. 

Brattle St. Church 134 

From a photograph loaned by the Bostonian Society. 
Edward T. Taylor (" Father Taylor ") 138 

From a photograph loaned by his daughter, Mrs. Dora 
Taft Brigham. 
J. T. Trowbridge at the age of 21 . . . .150 
From a daguerreotype taken in 184Q. 

Theodore Parker 168 

From a photograph. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 174 - 

From a daguerreotype taken in 1852. 
Charles F. Brown ("Artemus Ward") . . .182 

From a photograph. 
C. G. Halpine and B. P. Shillaber . . „ .188 
From a photograph. 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Dr. Wm. T. G. Morton 206 

From a photograph. 
Ben: Perley Poore 216 

From a photograph. 
Moses D. Phillips 228 

From a photograph. 
James Russell Lowell 236 

From a photograph taken in middle life. 
Francis H. Underwood 248 

From a photograph taken in middle life. 
Windsor Warren Trowbridge 266 

From a photograph taken in his fifth year. 
Lookout Mountain 288 

From a photograph taken in /86j. 
Gen. P. H. Sheridan 304 

From a photograph loaned by the Mass. Order of the 
Loyal Legion of the U. S. 
Columbia, S. C., after Sherman's Raid . . .312 

From a photograph loaned by the Mass. Order of the 
Loyal Legion of the U. S. 
J. T. Trowbridge at the age of 45 . . . . 322 

From a photograph taken in 1873. 
Daniel S. Ford 328 

From a photograph loaned by the editors of " The Youth's 
Companion." 
Ralph Waldo Emerson in Early Manhood . . 348 

From a daguerreotype tn possession of the Emerson 
family. 
Lewis B. Monroe at the age of 38 . . . . 352 

From a photograph. 
A. Bronson Alcott in later years .... 358 

From a photograph. 
Hon. Salmon P. Chase 370 

From a photograph taken in 1863. 
William D. O'Connor 378 

From a photograph loaned by Mrs. O' Connor- Calder. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

Walt Whitman at the age of 55 390 

From a photograph. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 408 

From a photograph in Harvard University Library. 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .... 420 

From a photograph in Harvard University Library. 
Arlington Lake (Spy Pond) 446 

From a photograph by Mr. F. G. Frost. 
Autograph Lines from " Three Worlds " . . . 448 
The Trowbridge Home Arlington .... 458 

From a photograph. 



Tu ne cede malis ; sed contra audentior ito, 
Qua tua te Fortuna sinet. 

jEneid VI., 95, 96. 

Yield not, whatever woeful stroke may be 
Thy portion, when befalls the evil day ; 

But draw fresh courage from calamity, 

And forward press, where Fortune points the way. 



MY OWN STORY 

CHAPTER I 

A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 



My English ancestor, Thomas Trowbridge, of 
Taunton, came to this country about the year 
1634. He was a grandson of that earlier Thomas 
who gave to the poor of Taunton the perpetual 
income from certain lands, to be dispensed by the 
wardens of St. Mary Magdalene and St. James, in 
which churches tablets commemorating the gift 
and the giver are conspicuously placed. Once a 
year, for now almost three hundred years, accord- 
ing to the terms of the will, " the Poorest, Oldest, 
most Honest and Impotent Poor " are assembled 
to hear a sermon, receive each his dole, and be 
reminded to thank God and the donor for the 
benefaction. As they receive only a shilling each, 
it is to be hoped the homily is not long. Despite 
the degrading conditions, regularly on St. 
Thomas's day the churches are thronged by appli- 
cants for the charity ; and one of the wardens 
assured a kinsman of mine, some years since, that 



2 MY OWN STORY 

it was "a blessing to the poor." As a descendant 
of the well-meaning Thomas, I am thankful for 
the warden's further assurance that the very old 
and infirm are excused from hearing the sermon, 
and get their gratuity without going to ask for it 
publicly. 

The emigrant, Thomas, brought his wife and 
two sons to America ; and a third son was born 
to him in Dorchester, Mass., where he first settled. 
He removed to New Haven in 1639, made voyages 
of traffic to Barbados, and finally went back to 
England, leaving his boys in New Haven, in the 
care of an unfaithful steward. The oldest of these 
sons, Thomas, is the ancestor of the New Haven 
family of Trowbridges. From the third son, 
James, I am descended. 1 

James returned to Dorchester, where his father 

1 The Trowbridge family derives its name from its ancient 
inheritance, Trowbridge, in the parish of Crediton, in Devon- 
shire, where it resided for many centuries, and which was the 
property of Peter de Trowbridge in the reign of Edward the 
First. A younger branch of the family was settled in Taunton, 
in Somersetshire, as early as 1541. That nearly all the Ameri- 
can Trowbridges are descended from this branch appears from 
the fact that whenever any of them are able to trace their an- 
cestry back three or four generations, the line can nearly always 
be found in The History of the Trowbridge Family, published by 
Thomas R. Trowbridge, of New Haven, in 1872, a full and care- 
fully prepared genealogy, to which I am chiefly indebted for 
these early data. 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 3 

must have left some property to look after, and 
later settled in Cambridge Village (now Newton). 
He was the grandfather of Judge Edmund Trow- 
bridge, the eminent jurist, and of Lydia Trow- 
bridge, who married the rising young barrister, 
Richard Dana, and became the mother of an illus- 
trious line. A brother of Edmund and Lydia was 
John Trowbridge, of Framingham, the father of 
Major John Trowbridge, who served in the Revo- 
lutionary War. 

My father, Windsor Stone Trowbridge, grand- 
son of Major John, was born in Framingham, 
where I found a sister of his still living, a gray- 
haired woman, when I first came to New England 
in 1 848. She showed me the site of the home of 
their childhood, marked only by a ruined cellar 
overgrown with grass and weeds, — a scene full 
of suggestiveness to an impressible youth, going 
on such a pilgrimage, to seek some trace of his 
parent's early years. 

When still quite young my father was taken by 
his parents to Oneida County, in Central New 
York, where, his mother dying, he was bound out 
to a Westmoreland farmer, John Townsend, with 
whom he lived until he was twenty-one, receiving, 
in return for his services, his board and clothing, 
a common-school education, and, on attaining his 
majority, a yoke of oxen and a hundred dollars in 



4 MY OWN STORY 

money. The service could not have been unduly- 
hard, for Mr. Townsend was a kind man, and he 
treated his ward in every respect as he did his 
own son, John, the boys being brought up to- 
gether like two brothers. But there was a preju- 
dice against such service, the hardships of which 
my father, in after years, sometimes endeavored 
to impress upon his own youngsters, when for 
our disobedience he would make the threat, " I '11 
bind you out if you don't behave better ! " — 
with a prodigious frown, which, however, did not 
frighten us, knowing well, as we did, how much 
easier it was for him, with his irritable temper 
and kind heart, to make a threat than it was to 
execute it. 

My father and the younger John Townsend 
never forgot their early attachment, but remained 
good friends long after my father left Westmore- 
land for the Genesee country, as it was then called, 
farther west. I was named for that companion of 
his boyhood, who made us at least one visit in our 
backwoods home, — a visit impressed upon me by 
an interesting circumstance, although I was then 
but four years old. Mr. Townsend stood with his 
back to the fire, and taking from his pocket a 
silver half-dollar, gave it to me, as he remarked, 
"for my name." It was probably the first half- 
dollar piece I had ever seen, and I did not see 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 5 

much of that. I don't remember just how it dis- 
appeared, but I have a distinct recollection of my 
father's saying he would give me a sheep for it, a 
proposition with which both the big and the little 
John Townsend were, I suppose, content. No 
doubt I thought it a fine thing to have a sheep 
all my own. There was, moreover, a condition 
attached to the transaction which I did not quite 
grasp at the time, but which was explained and 
well understood by me later. In that new country 
a farmer too poor . to purchase sheep would some- 
times take a small flock of a neighbor, with the 
obligation to return double the number at the end 
of four years. My father proposed to take my 
sheep on those terms ; it was still to be mine, but 
he was to have its wool and its progeny, and give 
me that sheep and another, or, at any rate, two 
sheep, on my eighth birthday. From that time it 
was understood that I was part owner of the flock. 
When I was six, I was told that I owned a sheep 
and a half ; and in watching the flock I used to 
wonder which whole sheep was mine and which 
half of which other sheep I could properly claim. 
When I was eight, I was the proud proprietor of 
two sheep ; when I was twelve, my father continu- 
ing to hire sheep of me, I had four ; and I was 
then able to figure out the bewildering number 
I would have, at that rate, when I got to be as old 



6 MY OWN STORY 

as he. At sixteen I had eight sheep ; at seven- 
teen I was entitled to ten ; but then I left the 
homestead and the undivided flock, — a source of 
ever multiplying and illimitable riches, if there 
were anybody to account to me for the hundreds 
of thousands of sheep that should now be mine by 
that simple rule of increase. It was always my 
fault that I did not look closely after my material 
and, for that matter, my more ethereal interests. 
I kept John Townsend's worthy name, but his half- 
dollar, and the fortune founded upon it, vanished 
into air, into thin air, like so many of my early 
and late expectations. 

II 

That part of the Genesee country to which my 
father emigrated was the township of Ogden, in 
Monroe County, a few miles west of the river that 
gave the region its name. Soon after attaining 
his freedom he had married a Westmoreland 
farmer's daughter, Rebecca Willey (granddaugh- 
ter of Captain John Willey, of East Haddam, 
Conn., a veteran of the Revolution), when she was 
eighteen and he twenty-one. They kept house 
about a year and a half in Westmoreland. Then, 
in the depth of winter, namely, in February, 1812, 
he yoked his oxen to a sleigh, on which were 
loaded a few farming and kitchen utensils and 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 7 

household goods, — all it could safely carry in the 
condition of the road, if road it might be called, a 
mere wagon track cut through the primeval woods, 
— and set out with her upon their rough journey 
of over a hundred miles and I know not how many 
days. What is now Syracuse was then a frontier 
settlement ; beyond that their way lay for the 
most part through the unbroken solitudes of the 
forest. There was no bridge over the Genesee, 
and but one house at the Falls, where the city of 
Rochester now stands. The emigrants expected 
to cross by a ferry at the mouth of the river, but 
they found the river frozen over, and the ferry- 
boat blocked. They put up at a log tavern, and 
crossing the next morning on the ice, pushed on 
into the vast and shadowy wilderness, my father 
walking by the horns of the oxen to navigate the 
sleigh among the projecting roots and through the 
snow-filled hollows ; the bars of sunshine slanting 
along the arches of great trunks and limbs, and 
the tinkling ice crust dropping from the boughs 
overhead. They reached their destination that 
afternoon. 

It was in the midst of dense woods, where 
a Westmoreland acquaintance had already made a 
small clearing and built a cabin. He took in the 
newcomers, and helped my father " roll up a 
house," — a mere hut, built of logs not too large 



8 MY OWN STORY 

for two men to roll up on inclined poles, and place 
one upon another. The "puncheon" floor was 
of split chestnut logs, the sleigh boards serving as 
the floor of the loft. Not a nail was used in the 
construction ; nails were expensive ; wooden pegs 
took their place. No stones could be gathered 
on account of the deep snow, and my mother's 
kettles would sink down into the soft ground 
which formed the hearth. The snow stayed until 
April. When it was gone, and she went out and 
found some " good, nice stones " to set her kettles 
on in the fireplace, she " felt rich," as she used 
smilingly to tell us children in later years. 

So my parents set up their simple housekeep- 
ing, and passed, I have no doubt, their happiest 
days, — days as happy, very likely, as any their 
children, or numerous grandchildren or great- 
grandchildren, have enjoyed in the stress of a 
more complex civilization. She sang at her work ; 
his axe resounded in the forest. He made a 
clearing, and planted corn and beans and potatoes 
among the stumps. Their first child was born in 
that hut. The clearing grew, and before long a 
larger, well-built house replaced the primitive 
cabin. 

This more substantial house had one large 
room on the ground floor, about twenty feet square, 
a low-roofed chamber, to which access was had by 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 9 

a ladder, and in the course of time a " linter " 
(lean-to) addition. The linter was framed, but 
the main part was built of logs. These were hewed 
on the inside, and the cracks between them filled 
with a plaster made of clay. The filling was lia- 
ble to crack, and it was necessary to patch the 
broken places every fall. This was called " chink- 
ing up the house," and it made a happy time for 
the older children, there being always some of 
the moist clay left over, which they could use in 
making cups and saucers and other ornaments for 
their playhouses. The floor was of dressed chest- 
nut planks, the beautiful grain kept scrupulously 
clean and smoothly polished. At one end of the 
room was a huge stone fireplace, with great and- 
irons, and heavy shovel and tongs in the corners. 
In the linter were the spare bed with its white 
counterpane, a tall brass-handled bureau, and our 
father's large oaken chest, with its complicated 
tills, always a marvel to the younger children, who 
would run and peep wonderingly whenever he 
went to open it. 

The large room in the main part was kitchen, 
parlor, and bedroom all in one. Curtained off in 
one corner was the parents' bed, covered by a 
handsome pieced quilt, and pillow slips of fine 
homemade linen, with our mother's maiden initials 
fancifully stitched upon them in blue letters. The 



io MY OWN STORY 

curtains and pillow slips were a part of her wed- 
ding outfit, and had been woven for her by our 
Grandmother Willey. Under the bed was a 
trundle-bed, drawn out at night for the youngest 
children to sleep in, and pushed back by day, 
when all would be concealed from view by the 
drawn curtains. Each child passed from the 
mother's arms to that trundle-bed, which gener- 
ally held two or three at a time ; the older ones, 
as their successors came, being allowed — and it 
was accounted a proud privilege — to go " up cham- 
ber " to sleep. There was no pantry, cupboards 
serving instead. Outside the house was a large 
brick oven, where the family baking was done. 
It was under a shed, which was some protection 
to our mother when she had "a bad day for bak- 
ing/' 

In this log house all the nine children were 
born except the first and the last. I was the 
eighth, and in it I first saw the light (that of a 
tallow candle) in September, 1827, after our 
parents had been fifteen years in their backwoods 
home. 

Ill 

The event, of so much more importance to me 
than to any one else, took place so nearly on the 
stroke of midnight that it was uncertain whether 










BIRTHPLACE OF J. T. TROWBRIDGE 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD n 

the 17th or 1 8th of the month should, in strict 
accordance with the fact, be set down as my 
birthday. In my childhood, some freedom of 
choice being left to me in the matter, — strange 
as it may seem that a boy should be able to choose 
his own birthday, — I stoutly maintained that 
the 17th was the anniversary, since it added the 
dignity of one day to my youthful years, and 
brought the presents, if there chanced to be any, 
one day earlier. But later in life, for a sadder 
reason, I fixed upon the date that made me a day 
younger. Then there was the satisfaction of feel- 
ing that I was a child of the morning. I had, 
however, cause to regret, even in my boyhood, 
that I did not put off my entrance upon the stage 
a few weeks longer, for then I could have enjoyed 
the distinction of being born in a new framed 
house, which the family moved into while I was 
yet in the cradle. But as it made not the slight- 
est difference to me at the time, so now I am as 
well content as if my eyes had first blinked and 
my infant lungs piped in a palace. 

The house in which my boyhood was passed, a 
two-story farmhouse painted white, with green 
blinds, stood, and I believe yet stands, on the 
north side of a road running east and west, a mile 
or more from the " Basin," as we used to call it, — 
Spencer's Basin, now Spencerport, on the Erie 



12 MY OWN STORY 

Canal. This was the nearest village. It was a 
small village then, but it prides itself on being so 
much of a village now that friends of mine, living 
there, express surprise that I do not claim it as 
my birthplace, it is so much more distinctive ! 
But I was not born in a village. Ogden includes 
Spencerport, and is distinctive enough for one so 
obscurely born and bred. 

Behind the house was the well, with its iron- 
bound bucket ; and not far beyond that was the 
fine orchard of apple and peach trees, which my 
father's hand had planted, and which were in 
their thrifty prime in the days of my childhood. 

Beyond the barn and orchard were the rolling 
pastures, the grainfields where I hoed corn and 
pulled redroot, and the wood-lot, which had been 
spared when the forest was driven back to make 
space for farm land. Beyond the wood-lot was 
the canal, with its passing boats, in sight from 
the rear fences of our farm, but not near enough 
for us boys to be in very great danger of contami- 
nation from the generally rude and often vicious 
characters of the boatmen. This great waterway 
is only about two years older than I, having been 
completed in 1825. It was one of the delights of 
my boyhood. I went " in swimming " in it, on sum- 
mer evenings ; in the autumn I peddled nuts and 
apples on it, dropping from the bridges upon the 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 13 

decks of passenger boats passing under. I skated 
on the frozen surface of the slack water in winter, 
and had on its banks many a boyish adventure. 

Still beyond the canal, on the north, was Lake 
Ontario, not many miles away, but veiled from 
view by a skirt of the ancient wilderness. When 
I revisited the farm in later years, the distant 
woods had disappeared, and the lake was visible 
from the high pasture land over which I had 
driven the cows hundreds of times in the sum- 
mers long gone by. As I recalled those summers 
on the pleasant hills, the feeling of glad surprise 
with which I looked off on the blue expanse was 
pierced by a pang of regret that that " thing of 
beauty " could not have been " a joy " of my bare- 
foot boyhood. 

Jessamine vines and morning-glories grew be- 
fore the front windows, and in beds near by were 
all the old-fashioned flowers, of which the pink 
and the flower-de-luce were always my favorites. 
Roses I admired, and other flowers had their spe- 
cial charms, but I loved the pink, and something 
in the exquisite tint and velvety softness of the 
bosom of the flower-de-luce awakened in me a 
yearning no words could ever express. I remem- 
ber when my sisters introduced into their garden 
a novelty known as the " love apple," prized for 
its beauty only, until it was popularized as the 
tomato, and banished to the vegetable garden. 



i 4 MY OWN STORY 

In front of the house the ground fell in a gentle 
green slope to the road, on the other side of which, 
not many rods off, was an immense gloomy 
swamp, shaded by lofty elms that shut out the 
sun, and full of fallen trunks, rotten logs covered 
with moss as with coats of thick fur, and black, 
silent pools that to my childish imagination had a 
mysterious depth. Awe and wonder peopled for 
me those profound solitudes. By night raccoons 
whinnied and owls hooted in them, and at times 
clouds of mosquitoes came out of them. The 
roaring wind in the tossing sea of tops, the creak- 
ing of dry limbs, the fireflies fitfully embroidering, 
as with stars and threads of gold, the dark skirts 
of the swamp, and the bears and panthers and 
phantoms which I fancied inhabiting it, filled my 
childish soul with wonder and joy. There frogs 
held their concerts ; and often, after a shower, 
when the wind was southerly, sulphurous odors 
were wafted to us from the troubled pools. 

One would think our farmhouse must have 
been in an unhealthy place, but it was not so. 
We had no ague in our neighborhood, and there 
were probably no malarial mosquitoes in the 
swamp. The house stood on high ground, and 
our only protection against mosquitoes was a 
smudge-fire on summer nights. 

There was a tradition among the boys that this 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 15 

swamp was impassable, and I think I must have 
been nine or ten years old before I ventured to 
penetrate its dim recesses very far. Then, taking 
advantage of an unusually dry season, and mark- 
ing the trees so that I could find my way back, I 
tramped and scrambled through it, and found to 
my surprise that it was only a belt of woods, with 
high and dry farm lands on the other side. I lost 
my awe of it from that day, and almost wished I 
had left it unexplored. I have since found many 
such dark and mysterious places in life, filled with 
shadowy terrors, until, with a little resolution, 
they have been passed through. When last I 
visited the old homestead, there was no black and 
dismal swamp in front of it, but a well-drained 
broad green meadow basking in the summer sun. 

IV 

The new house also had its great fireplace, and 
one of the pleasant recollections of my boyhood is 
the generous fire that on winter nights filled the 
room with its glow. The building of this fire was 
a somewhat elaborate affair. After the evening 
chores were done, my father would appear in the 
doorway with the big backlog coated with snow, 
often of ampler girth than himself, and fully breast 
high to him as he held it upright, canting it one 
way and another, and " walking " it before him on 



1 6 MY OWN STORY 

its wedge-shaped end. He would perhaps stand 
it against the chimney while he took a breathing 
spell and planned his campaign. Then, the and- 
irons hauled forward on the hearth, and the bed 
of half -burnt brands and live coals raked open, 
the icy log was got into the fireplace, where a 
skillful turn would lay it over, hissing and steam- 
ing, in its lair of hot embers. It seemed a thing 
alive, and its vehement sputtering and protesting 
made a dramatic moment for at least one small 
spectator. The stout shovel and tongs, or per- 
haps a piece of firewood used as a lever, would 
force it against the chimney back ; then a good- 
sized stick, called a "back-stick," was laid on top 
of it, and the andirons were set in place. Across 
the andirons another good-sized stick was laid, 
called a " fore-stick," and in the interspace smaller 
sticks were crossed and thrust and piled, all 
quickly kindled by the live coals and brands. 

In very cold weather a fire was kept burning 
all night, our father getting up once or twice to 
replenish it. Even in summer the coals rarely 
became extinct. A good heap of them, covered 
with embers at bedtime, would be found alive 
when raked open in the morning. This was a 
needful precaution before locofoco matches came 
into use. Every house had its tinder-box, but 
starting a flame with flint and steel was a tedious 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 17 

process at the best, and "borrowing fire" was 
usual among neighbors when one had the mis- 
chance to lose his overnight. I am unable to say- 
how long this custom continued, but I must have 
been seven or eight years old when a vagabondish 
neighbor came to our house one morning with his 
wife's foot-stove to get some coals. He was a 
reckless liar, of whom it was proverbially said that 
he would "lie for the fun of it" when the truth 
would have been more to his advantage. As 
we had had our breakfast, my mother said to 
him, " Your folks must have slept late this morn- 
ing." "Bless you, no! "he replied; "we were 
up at daylight, and my wife has done a large iron- 
ing." I remember with what good-natured effront- 
ery he joined in the laugh against him when my 
mother said she would like their receipt for doing 
an ironing without fire. 

The foot-stove was a small sheet-iron box in a 
wooden frame, and with a perforated cover, made 
for holding a basin of live coals imbedded in ashes ; 
it was used in cold weather to rest the feet on 
in the sleigh, or in the cold meeting-house. My 
mother always took hers to church with her from 
October until April. Between services, a fresh 
supply of coals was obtained at a house near by, 
for the afternoon. 

The first friction matches I ever saw were 



18 MY OWN STORY 

brought to school by a boy who lighted one by 
placing it in the folds of a piece of sandpaper and 
drawing it out with a quick pull. When we who 
stood looking on saw it come out actually on fire, 
our wonder and envy knew no bounds. No, sir ! he 
would n't let one of us ignite or even touch one ; 
he would light just one more himself, and only 
one, and we need n't tease, for those magical bits 
of wood were too precious to be wasted in idle 
experiments. It wasn't long before everybody 
had matches, and a new era in household econ- 
omy began. 

Along with matches, stoves came into the set- 
tlement. A " Franklin " was set up in our kitchen, 
and the arched brick oven, that had been built 
into the chimney by the fireplace to supersede 
the primitive oven outside the house, was itself 
superseded. The tin " baker," in which meats 
were roasted before an open fire, also became 
obsolete. We still had open fires in the sitting- 
room, and sometimes in the "east room " (or par- 
lor) when my sisters came to have beaux. 

When I was seven years old, my eldest sister, 
Venilia, married one of these beaux, a young Ver- 
monter, who had taught our district school and 
made her acquaintance while boarding around. 
I do not recall the wedding ceremony, but I re- 
member well the beautifully frosted wedding-cake, 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 19 

served to a large company grouped before our sit- 
ting-room fire. It was winter, and not long after, 
namely, in February, 1835, the young couple emi- 
grated to " the West," as our father and mother 
had done just twenty-three years before. 

The " West " in this instance was Illinois. The 
day of their departure remains vividly impressed 
in my memory. There was snow on the ground, 
but instead of a sleigh and oxen a large emigrant 
wagon drawn by horses was brought to the door. 
The tearful adieux were said (I wondered why my 
mother and sisters cried so), and the great slow 
wagon rolled away, the wheels clogging with the 
damp snow (I can still see them), and the white 
canvas top soon disappearing over the hill; be- 
fore it, a pilgrimage of near six hundred miles ! 
It was a much longer but not rougher journey 
than that of our parents, which in some respects 
it resembled. As our father and mother had 
found the ferryboat blocked by ice at the mouth 
of the Genesee, so the later emigrants arrived at 
the Detroit River when it was closed over by a 
" cold snap " in the month of March. My bro- 
ther-in-law would not risk crossing with his young 
wife in the loaded wagon, but took her over first, 
in a light cutter, running at the horse's head, to 
insure safety with speed ; the tough, thin ice un- 
dulating under the gliding runners. Afterwards, 



20 MY OWN STORY 

by dividing his load, he got all over without acci- 
dent. They were almost a month in reaching the 
head of Lake Michigan, near which a cluster of 
houses around a fort, on a dismal flat, marked the 
spot where the miracle of a mighty city was so 
soon to rise. They could now congratulate them- 
selves on being near their journey's end — only 
twenty-five miles farther to go ! But, crossing 
the vast plain over which Chicago now spreads, 
they found it a seemingly endless waste of melt- 
ing snow and slush, almost knee-deep to the team ; 
then, for the first time, my sister lost heart and 
cried. Was that the beautiful prairie land of 
which they had heard so much, and where they 
were going to pass their lives ? But hope rose 
again when they crossed the Des Plaines and 
came into the grove-girt, rolling prairie country, 
where their new home was to be, in a land of 
flowers and wide horizons. 



Not even the all-night fires could keep our house 
warm in very cold weather. After my older bro- 
ther and I had been promoted from the trundle- 
bed (which went with us from the old house into 
the new), we slept in an unfinished corner of the 
chamber that must have had an arctic temperature 
on many a winter night. The bare rafters and 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 21 

rough roof boards sloped down over our bed, the 
wind whistled around the gable and perhaps rat- 
tled a loose shingle, and sometimes on stormy 
nights a fine snow sifted down insidiously, spray- 
ing ever so softly any part of nose or cheek or 
ear tip left peeping out from under the bedclothes. 
It was not an uncommon thing to find a little 
white heap or two, mere fairy snowdrifts, on the 
spread in the morning. Oh, but how we slept ! 
And what brisk fun it was, jumping out of bed in 
the stinging cold of the wintry dawn, to catch up 
our clothes and scamper downstairs with them, 
to dress before the crackling fire ! The only seri- 
ous discomfort of those nights, that haunts my 
memory, was waking up, and perhaps lying awake, 
with cold feet. To remedy that, my brother and 
I used to run out into the snow barefoot, just be- 
fore going to bed. The excruciating ache caused 
by this heroic treatment reacted in a glow that 
would commonly last all night. 

In the course of time our corner of the attic 
was done off and we had a white-plastered room 
to sleep in and keep our chests in, like the rooms 
our sisters occupied in the other end of the house. 
But there was an "under the eaves" part that 
always remained unfinished. That, in my earliest 
years, was the lurking place of phantoms ; and 
there was a den of impish creatures behind the 



22 MY OWN STORY 

great chimney. My father belonged to the militia, 
and had been called out to resist a threatened 
landing of the British at the mouth of the Gene- 
see, in the war of 1812. The musket he had car- 
ried in that bloodless expedition leaned at the 
mouth of the den ; no mere inanimate stock and 
barrel, but a dumb sentinel, conscious of the mys- 
teries it guarded, and ready day and night to do 
its solemn duty. It kept a very special lookout 
for small boys. How real a thing it was to me, 
in that unfriendly character, may be inferred from 
a naive reply I made when one of my sisters asked 
why I always shied in passing near that corner. I 
said, " I 'm afraid the old musket will snap at me !" 
I had seen my father take it down and try the old 
flint lock, and had marveled at his temerity. 

I never had a good look at one of the impish 
creatures, but I knew just what they were like. 
They had no bodies, nor much in the way of heads, 
for that matter, their faces being set flat on their 
little straight legs, like the tops of milking-stools. 
But they were only about one half or one quarter 
the size of milking-stools. Neither had I ever 
really heard them, but the certainty that they pat- 
tered off on their little legs when they saw me 
coming, and then chuckled and whispered and 
leered, away back in their black hole, could n't 
have been whipped out of me. 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 23 

Among the heirlooms which time had stranded 
in our unfinished attic were some weaving-frames, 
cards for carding wool, a hackle, and our grand- 
mother Willey's small flax spinning-wheel, all 
which had gone out of use. As long ago as I can 
remember, the unsold wool from our flock was no 
longer carded by hand, but was sent to a factory, 
from which it came back in the form of beautiful 
white rolls, to be spun by the mother and sisters, 
on the big spinning-wheel downstairs. The spun 
yarn went again to the mill, where it was woven 
and dyed, and came home "fulled cloth," to be 
cut up into garments, fitted and stitched and 
pressed by our mother's own hand. 

VI 

The world was all a mystery to me, which I was 
forever seeking to solve ; but the greatest mystery 
of all was that of the people around me. I can 
hardly remember a time when I did not try to enter 
somehow into their consciousness and think with 
their thoughts. I would sit patiently in my little 
chair, and watch my mother rocking and knitting, 
something within me yearning to fathom some- 
thing in her ; wondering how it seemed to be as 
old as she, how life looked to her, and what it was 
that made her chair rock and her hands move, 
always just so, and not otherwise. When I was 



24 MY OWN STORY 

old enough to be taken to meeting, I would enter- 
tain myself by studying certain persons whose 
faces fascinated me, endeavoring to guess their 
secrets, and to make out why one was gray and 
wrinkled, another young and handsome, and why 
one was always so distinctly one's own self and 
not another's. I knew they never had any such 
thoughts as troubled a little boy like me, but what 
were their thoughts ? 

At times it seemed to me that while the people 
and things around me might be real, I was a sort 
of dream. Then they were the dream, and I was 
the sole reality ; even my own father and mother 
and brothers and sisters were phantoms, and the 
earth and trees and clouds were pictures, provided 
for my use and entertainment. These Sittings 
across my inner consciousness would hardly reach 
the surface of my thoughts ; if ever they did, I 
was sensible enough to perceive that they were 
the idlest illusions, and I early outgrew them. 

But the feeling that everything was provided 
and prearranged for me was more persistent. In- 
visible beings surrounded and watched over me, 
and shaped the world and all things for my good. 
They knew all that I did or thought or felt ; they 
were so near and so real that I sometimes talked 
to them, and was sure they whispered to me, 
though I could never quite make out what they 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 25 

said. This belief — if anything so formless and 
unreasoned can be called a belief — was wholly 
instinctive, and could not have been suggested by, 
as it probably antedated, any teaching I received 
regarding God and the angels. God, according 
to my earliest conception, was a big man, taller 
than our well-sweep ; and angels were great white 
things with wings. My invisibles had nothing so 
tangible as wings, and were as bodiless as the 
breeze that brushed my hair. The sense of their 
immediate presence became gradually obscured ; 
but even after I was old enough to argue my- 
self out of it, I never quite lost the feeling of 
their oversight and guidance, — the feeling which 
I have elsewhere commemorated, attempting to 
define what is so indefinable : — 

" The haunting faith, the shadowy superstition, 
That I was somehow chosen, the special care 
Of Powers that led me through life's changeful vision, 
Spirits and influences of earth and air." 

Problems which have baffled the greatest minds 
oppressed me at a very early age. I can remem- 
ber lying on my back under an orchard tree, when 
I could n't have been more than eight or nine 
years old, gazing up through the boughs into the 
blue depths of the sky, and trying to think of time 
and space, until my inmost sense ached with the 
effort. It was the beginning of time that troubled 



26, MY OWN STORY 

me, for it must have had a beginning ; and yet — 
what was before that ? And there must be a limit 
to the sky ; but when I conceived of that limit as 
a great blank wall, no matter how far away, the 
same difficulty met me, — what was beyond that 
wall? My older brother seemed never to have 
thought of such things, and hardly to know what 
I meant when I spoke of them. I could never be 
satisfied with my mother's answer when I carried 
my questions to her, — " Those are things nobody 
can understand," — and I wondered how it could 
satisfy her. It was no explanation to say that God 
made the world, unless somebody could tell me 
who made God, or how he made himself, and 
what was before God was. 

VII 

I was brought up under the shadow of the Cal- 
vinism of those days, and listened to its preachings 
and teachings, sitting in the straight-backed pew 
of the meeting-house or on a bench of the Sunday- 
school. Sunday was a day of irksome restraint 
and gloom. It began at sundown on Saturday, 
and ended at sundown on Sunday, and sometimes 
a little earlier for us boys, if the afternoon chanced 
to be overcast, and we could persuade our mother 
that it was time to relieve the pressure and let 
our youthful spirits effervesce. Fortunately she 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 27 

was more liberal than her creed, and although any- 
thing like games or sports was prohibited in the 
hours that were to be kept "holy," and a certain 
amount of serious reading was enjoined, we gen- 
erally had the freedom of the barn and fields and 
orchard before and after church. No work was 
performed except the necessary chores. 

Church-going was rigidly observed. Our meet- 
ing-house was at Ogden Centre, a mile away as 
the crows flew when they flew straight ; it was 
considerably farther around by the road. Every 
Sunday morning the one-horse wagon was brought 
to the door about the time the ringing of the first 
bell sent its loud bim-bom over the woods and 
farms and into our hearts, with all its solemn asso- 
ciations. The mother, in her best black gown, 
and with her foot-stove, if the weather was cold, 
the father, freshly shaved, in his high black stock 
and equally uncomfortable tall black hat, and such 
of the sisters as were at home, filled the two broad 
seats, with perhaps one of us youngsters wedged 
in, though we preferred to walk in good weather ; 
then the vehicle moved out of the front gate, and 
joined the procession of wagons going in the same 
direction, impelled by the same pious duty. With 
the foot-stove or without it went luncheons for 
the noonday hour, for the religious exercises were 
an all-day affair, with forenoon and afternoon ser- 



28 MY OWN STORY 

vices, and the Bible-class and Sunday-school in the 
interval which the minister took for rest between 
his sermons. It was not supposed that his hear- 
ers needed rest. There were sheds for the vehi- 
cles, and the man who was kind to his beasts 
usually put into his wagon with the family sand- 
wiches a small bag of grain for his team. The 
services began at half past ten, and were over at 
half past two, unless the afternoon sermon was 
"lengthy," as it was very apt to be: four hours 
of doctrine and edification on which Heaven was 
supposed to smile ; four hours of light and sun- 
shine and recreation stricken out of our lives on 
that so-called day of rest. 

I can remember how utterly vacuous I felt, in 
both mind and body, at the end of that exhausting 
ordeal. Often one of the family would remain at 
home, to take care of the house, and of my younger 
brother, five years my junior, before he was old 
enough to be subjected to that long confinement. 
Happy the day and blissful the chance when that 
care -taking was assigned to me. I was never 
lonely when left alone, yet I was always glad when 
I saw the dust and heard the rumble of vehicles 
coming home from meeting. I knew how hungry 
everybody would be, and never failed to have the 
pot and kettle boiling. 

My mother was a woman of strong devotional 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 29 

feelings, and with an unquestioning faith in a 
divine Providence and in immortality. She no 
more doubted that eternal life awaited her in the 
blissful society of friends she had known here 
than that she should awaken in the morning after 
a normal night's sleep. This belief seemed inher- 
ent in her, and she loved to dwell upon it. The 
doctrines of total depravity and eternal torment 
she accepted on the authority of her church ; but 
that they were external to her spiritual nature I 
am convinced, for the reason that she never in- 
sisted upon them, nor even mentioned them, as I 
now recall, in her endeavors to impress upon us 
younger children the necessity for a " change of 
heart." Three of my sisters became church mem- 
bers in their girlhood. I think my older brother 
also joined the church ; if he did, he became a 
backslider. He got " converted " in the tremen- 
dous excitement of revival meetings, but in him 
the exuberance of unreflecting animal spirits did 
not permit the religious feeling to strike perma- 
nent root. 

My father was a constant church-goer, and he 
at one time led the choir. He never became a 
communicant, not because he had leanings toward 
skepticism, but because he had not consciously 
" experienced religion." If right living constitutes 
righteousness, there was no more righteous man in 



3 o MY OWN STORY 

the church than he was out of it. But he had not 
met with the change of heart which was deemed 
essential to an admission to its fold. He was at 
times persuaded by our mother to conduct family 
worship, but he lacked the gift of prayer in which 
she abounded ; and I recall painful occasions when, 
as we all knelt at our chairs, he broke down in 
his supplication, becoming stranded, so to speak, 
with his burden ; whereupon she would sail in and 
take it up, and on a full tide of eloquence bear it 
into port. 

I had something of my mothers natural reli- 
gious feeling, yet not all the pains of perdition 
preached by imported revivalists — which, in the 
dim candle-light, amid the misty exhalations, the 
sobbings and moanings, of the evening meetings, 
frightened my mates and acquaintances into seek- 
ing the " anxious seat " — could terrify me into 
following their example. Something granitic within 
me resisted all such influences. Whatever intel- 
ligence and spiritual perception I had revolted 
against the threatenings hurled down upon us by 
those pulpit prophets of wrath, and I sat cold and 
critical, at times even cynical, I fear, when the 
exhorters shouted, and some of the worst boys I 
knew, recently convicted of sin, got hold of me 
and implored me to come forward, be prayed for, 
and gain a hope. 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 31 

I prayed by myself, frequently aloud, when I 
was walking alone in the fields ; prayed earnestly 
that the truth might be shown to me, opening my 
heart to it like a flower to the light, and making 
vows to follow wherever it led, to live by it and 
confess it, at whatever cost. I remember doing 
this when I was about twelve years old. But the 
more I thought of the fall of man, total depravity, 
the scheme of redemption, and kindred tenets, the 
more strongly they impressed me as being unnat- 
ural, and humanly contrived. Once I became an- 
gry with a sled I was making, the pieces of which 
would not fit according to my plan. I gave it a 
vindictive kick. Then I checked myself and said, 
" That 's like what they say God did when he 
made the world and found it did n't suit him." I 
was calmed and shamed, and at once set about 
putting the pieces together. 

I was always wondering at the beauty and mys- 
tery of the earth and sky, — the air in its place, 
the water in its place, the birds adapted to their 
life, the fishes to theirs, the growth of trees and 
grass and flowers, the sun by day, and by night 
the moon and stars ; and I never once imagined 
that these visible miracles could have come about 
by any sort of chance. I had a vague conception 
of a law of adaptation in nature, some power 
that kept the balance of things, which in later 



32 MY OWN STORY 

years the theories of evolution and the survival of 
the fittest tended to confirm and explain. I clung 
intuitively to a belief in divine Providence and an 
intelligent Source of Life ; not in consequence 
of the religious instructions I received, but rather 
in spite of them. I say in spite of them, because 
I regard those preachings and teachings as hav- 
ing been distinctly harmful to me in many ways. 
They cast a shadow over my childhood, and en- 
shrouded in baleful gloom even the Sun of Right- 
eousness. It was not until long after I got away 
from them that I came back to the Bible with 
a fresh sense of the beauty of its literature, and 
of the spiritual insight and power that illumine 
the best parts of it, and make it, above all other 
books, the Word of God. 

VIII 

With her strong devotional feelings and a sen- 
sitive temperament, my mother possessed great 
energy of character. She had taught school in 
her girlhood, and was always ambitious of giving 
her own children a good education. We all had 
what the district school could afford ; and it was 
chiefly owing to her strong determination that my 
two younger sisters were sent to " select schools " 
at Rochester and Spencer's Basin. Our father did 
not oppose their going, but the family means 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 33 

were limited, and he would often say that he 
" could n't see where the money was to come 
from " to provide things which her rigid economy 
rendered possible. By the exercise of that and 
by managing the " butter and cheese money," of 
which she had the control, she contrived to send 
the girls away to school. Once when I was at 
home sick with a cold, and was supposed to be 
asleep on the lounge, I heard her say to my father 
that she wanted enough of the wheat and wool 
money saved to " educate John with ; " to which 
he replied, " What good will it ever do him ?" Yet 
I knew that he was as proud as she was of what 
they had heard of my progress in my studies, and 
as desirous of doing for me all their circumstances 
would allow. From many a task I was saved be- 
cause I was seen with a book in my hand. 

My father had almost too delicate a constitution 
for the life of hard labor to which he was born. 
He had a talent for music, of which he was pas- 
sionately fond, and which he used to teach in the 
early pioneer days. I can remember seeing him 
so much affected by the singing of the country 
choir in the old meeting-house, during which part 
of the service it was customary for the congrega- 
tion to stand, that he was obliged to sit down, 
overcome by his emotions. I might not have 
guessed what the trouble was, but for our mother 



34 MY OWN STORY 

saying to him after meeting that she should think 
he might control his feelings a little better ; she 
did n't consider the singing anything so very fine. 
"Maybe not," he replied. "But it brings up 
something — I can't tell what ! " And his voice 
choked with the recollection. One of the satisfac- 
tions of his life was the Sunday evening gathering 
in our sitting room, when neighbors would some- 
times come in and unite with him and my sisters 
(one of whom had an unusually good voice) in 
singing the old fashioned hymns. 

He had an irritable temper, but he was a kind 
and indulgent parent, and in my childhood I was 
fonder of him than of anybody else in the world, 
even our mother. When he sat down with us in 
the evening, I liked to climb upon his knees, put 
my arms around his neck, and have him " baird " 
me, that is, rub his beard of two or three days' 
growth against my cheek, while I hugged him 
affectionately. Our mother undoubtedly had as 
deep and sincere a love for us, and would perhaps 
have done even more for us than he, but somehow 
I never got quite so near to her heart as I did 
to his. She was far more strict than he, in the 
discipline of us children ; fortunately for us, no 
doubt, although I certainly did not think so at the 
time. More than once when she was about to 
punish me for some offense, he would exclaim, 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 35 

" I '11 attend to him ! " — take me sternly by the 
collar, lead me out into the orchard, cut a very 
small switch, give me two or three very light 
strokes with it across my back, then say, in the 
lovingest tones, " There ! now be a good boy, and 
mind your mother ! " On my return to the house 
she would ask, " Well ! did he whip you ? " With 
hypocritical woe in my features, I would falter, 
"Yes!" at which her just remark would very 
likely be, " I don't believe he half punished you ! 
I 've a good mind to punish you over again ! " 
But I don't remember that she ever did. 

He early instilled into us a detestation of dis- 
honest practices and of the shirking of obliga- 
tions; and was himself ever a model of upright 
conduct and neighborly dealing. He was con- 
sulted by many persons in common matters of 
business, and strangers came from long distances 
to get his opinion of horses, for which he had a 
great love, and of which he had an intuitive know- 
ledge. For nearly twenty years he was collector 
of the town taxes, an office that gave him a plea- 
sant occupation in winter, and opportunities for 
meeting all sorts of people, in his all-day rides. 

During all that time he was also a town con- 
stable, and served many a writ. But he was a 
peacemaker, caring more for the promotion of 
right and good will than for securing a fee. I well 



36 MY OWN STORY 

remember his advice to an angry man who once 
came with a summons for him to serve : " You 're 
foolish to sue ! Go and talk it over with him in a 
neighborly spirit, and meet him halfway. Don't 
rush into a lawsuit." 

He had a horror of debt, being perhaps over 
cautious in that regard. He took up originally 
only forty acres of land, but he might have had 
four or five times as much if he had been willing 
to borrow money to pay for it. For ten acres ad- 
ditional he afterwards paid more than three or four 
hundred would have cost, at the government price. 
" I would do just so again," he would say. " I 've 
seen too much of the wreck and ruin caused by 
debt." He no doubt had in mind an instance which 
had come very near to him and my mother. My 
grandfather, Alfred Willey, had been a well-to-do 
farmer in Westmoreland, and had lost all his pro- 
perty by becoming security for a friend, — " House 
and home, everything, even to the old grindstone, 
just by signing his name ! " as my mother used to 
say, in speaking of the family disaster. 

My father had an inexhaustible fund of good 
stories, which he would tell one after another as 
long as he had listeners, commonly linking them 
together with " That puts me in mind," or " That 
reminds me again." I can see him now, in his 
favorite attitude on a winter's evening, after light- 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 37 

ing his pipe with a coal, standing with his back to 
the fire, a pitcher of cider warming beside him on 
the hearth, and his face in a genial glow, while he 
exercised his powers of humorous mimicry, to the 
amusement of us children and any guests that 
had dropped in. 

IX 

After my grandfather Willey lost his West- 
moreland property by " signing his name," he 
moved with his family to Ogden, where he died 
when I was two years and nine months old. It 
was my first sight and knowledge of death, and I 
remember how bewildered I was by it. I asked 
why they " put grandpa in that cradle." I could n't 
have been present at the burial, but it must have 
been explained to me, for the gloom of it left 
upon me a life-long impression. I recollect riding 
with my parents at twilight, sitting in my little 
chair between their feet in the wagon, and ask- 
ing mournfully, at every lonesome - looking spot 
we passed, " Is this where grandpa was buried ? " 
It was as if nobody had ever died before, and 
somebody should have prevented so dreadful a 
thing happening to my good grandpa. 1 

1 I recall only one other circumstance of as early an ascer- 
tained date. This was a tremendous hailstorm that occurred 
one Sunday in June of the same year (1830), when all the win- 



38 MY OWN STORY 

After her husband's death my grandmother 
Willey lived with her married sons and daughters, 
with all of whom she was in a manner welcome ; 
yet her presence was a cloud under whatever 
roof. The loss of the Westmoreland home was 
but one of many misfortunes that saddened her 
later years. After the removal to Ogden she had 
broken her ankle by falling with her horse on a 
rough backwoods road, the bones had been badly 
set, and she walked on the side of her foot, limp- 
ing painfully with a cane. In her younger days 
she had been a woman of remarkable vigor and 
courage, and had once made a horseback journey 
from Westmoreland to her old home in East Had- 
dam, Ct, carrying all the way thither and back a 
two-year-old child before her on the saddle. Un- 
fortunately she did not have the religious faith 
which her daughter, my mother, enjoyed, to sus- 
tain her in her afflictions ; and her complaints 
were wearisome to hear. She must have been a 
sore trial to our parents, but I believe they made 
the best of it, and I think my older sisters under- 
stood and commiserated her condition ; but to us 

dow panes on two sides of the house were shattered. To get 
me out of the way of the terror and danger of it, my mother put 
me on her bed, from which I watched her stepping cautiously 
around with a broom, sweeping the hailstones and broken glass 
into a heap on the hearth ; a scene as vivid in my memory to-day 
as anything in my life that has happened since. 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 39 

boys her coming was portentous of storm and her 
going an occasion of glee. I may have owed to 
her the suggestion of Grandmother Rigglesty, in 
Neighbor Jackwood, but it was not at all her por- 
trait that I sketched in that aggressively unami- 
able character. After I was old enough to appre- 
ciate her truly admirable traits and the nature of 
the calamities that had broken her, I felt remorse 
for my childish uncharitableness towards her, and 
have always wished that I might atone for it by a 
kind word in her memory. She died in the home 
of a daughter in Illinois. I never saw her after 
I was about nine years old. 



It was always a great event in my boyhood 
when my father would take me with him to Roch- 
ester, especially if I could be indulged with a sight 
of the Falls, and hear once more the story of Sam 
Patch's fatal jump. After about my eleventh 
year that marvel of nature became associated in 
my mind with a yet more tragically impressive 
circumstance. A cousin of mine, a young mar- 
ried woman, living in Rochester on a bank of the 
Genesee, went one winter day to fill a pail at the 
water's edge, and never returned. When search 
was made for her, the marks of her fingers were 
seen on the snow-crusted brink, where she had 



4 o MY OWN STORY 

evidently slipped and fallen into the river, and 
struggled in vain to get out. The finger-marks 
were traced for two or three rods in the direction 
in which the current had swept her on, then they 
disappeared. It was four or five days before her 
drowned body was recovered, off the lake shore, 
near the mouth of the river. From that time I 
could never behold the falls without picturing the 
poor girl's horror and fear as she felt her numbed 
and wounded fingers slipping from the icy crust, 
and saw herself borne by the wild rapids to inevi- 
table death in the plunging cataract and boiling 
gulf below. 

XI 

Our district schoolhouse was at a crossing of 
the roads half a mile or less east of our home. It 
was of red brick, its walls were cracked, and kept 
from falling asunder by iron rods passing com- 
pletely through, at a convenient height for boys 
to jump up to, and catch, and perform gymnastic 
feats on, in the dingy old entry, at recess. Gro- 
tesque methods of enforcing discipline among the 
pupils were in vogue in those days, — " sitting on 
nothing," with the back against the wall ; " hold- 
ing down a nail in the floor," with a forefinger, 
in a painfully stooping posture ; standing with an 
arm outstretched and a pile of books in the hand ; 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 41 

" licking jackets," when two boys who had quar- 
reled received from the master each a stout switch, 
and were made to fight out their feud in the pre- 
sence of the edified school, he himself putting in 
a cut for example when they were too tender of 
each other and did not hit hard enough. The 
school was ungraded and the methods of teaching 
were primitive, but there is this to be said of it, 
that the pupil that had a mind for self -improve- 
ment could get a fair common-school education 
under the worst teachers, and that some of these 
were far better than the system they represented. 
At school or elsewhere I was by disposition 
the least quarrelsome of boys. But I was quick 
in my resentments, and liked to pay all debts 
promptly. If I suffered a blow, my unregenerate 
notion was that the next belonged to the other 
fellow's cheek, not to mine, and that when such 
things were passing, it was better to give than 
to receive. Deep down in my heart I abominate 
warfare, among boys, or men, or nations ; and be- 
lieve in the coming time when mutual good-will, 
forbearance, and the love of righteousness will 
usher in a reign of peace. Boys are nearer the 
primitive man than we their elders are; there 
must be individual growth to correspond with ra- 
cial progress, before the so-called natural deprav- 
ity of wild beast traits, developed in the struggle 



42 MY OWN STORY 

for existence, is redeemed in them by the spirit 
of love, or transformed into power, in safer condi- 
tions. The wild apple-tree sprout bears thorns 
that disappear from the robust stem. A boy may 
be so well born that he will pass through the world 
without conflict, with no defense but his wise, 
sweet, gentle nature. But such are rare ; and, 
for my part, I prefer that one should stand up 
for his honor and his right, even to the extent 
of fighting for them, rather than yield to wrong 
because he is a milksop. 

As I look back now, there seem to have been 
two boys in me ; one the truly gentle boy, shrink- 
ing from contact with the ruder sort, and yearn- 
ing for trustful and loving comradeship ; the other 
a dormant but too easily roused cave-dweller. The 
savage came uppermost in two or three minor 
battles with schoolmates, and in one furious fight 
with a strange boy I had the ill fortune to en- 
counter at a militia muster, — a performance that 
caused me infinite humiliation at the time, on ac- 
count of its publicity, but which I look back upon 
now without compunction, since it was undertaken 
in defense of a younger companion. 

XII 

I was only an average pupil until about my fif- 
teenth year, when a slight thing gave my mind 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 43 

a start. In what was called the "back part 
of the spelling-book " there was a list of foreign 
words and phrases with their English equivalents 
affixed. We had not been required to learn these, 
and perhaps they interested me the more for this 
reason. I went through them eagerly, committed 
them to memory, and conceived an ardent desire 
to study a foreign language. 

I wished to have some necessary books bought 
for me, but money for such things was scarce in 
our family, and no doubt my parents thought it 
better that I should confine myself to studies that 
were taught in school. An invalid cousin of mine, 
a young lady who had had a boarding-school edu- 
cation, heard of my ambition, and on her deathbed 
directed that her French books should be given to 
me. There were only three of these, — a gram- 
mar of the old-fashioned sort, a small dictionary, 
and a reader, — but I never in my life felt richer 
than when the precious volumes were brought 
home and put into my hands. 

It was probably all the better for my mental 
discipline that the language was not made easy to 
me by our more modern methods. Yet I did not 
find it hard ; there was a joy in acquiring it which 
made a pastime of the dry conjugations and of 
the slow process of reading with the help of a 
dictionary. 



44 MY OWN STORY 

I did not find much difficulty with anything but 
the pronunciation. The textbooks gave me little 
help in that, and after the death of my cousin I 
did not know anybody who had the slightest 
acquaintance with the language. I went through 
the grammar and reader, and a Telemaque which 
I found in the town library, and so got to read 
and translate the language before I ever heard 
it spoken. 

I took other books from the library, which was 
supported by subscribers, of whom my father was 
one. 1 I read Ivanhoe with wonder and delight, 
and in consequence of the historical curiosity it 
excited in me, took out next an abridged Hume's 
History of England. I read Cooper's Spy and 

1 In a letter written for the centennial celebration of the settle- 
ment of Ogden, August 7, 1902, I said of this library: "I dare 
not now attempt to tell how much I owe to that small but 
well-chosen collection of books — how the common world was 
transformed for me by the poets and romancers that smiled on 
me from those obscure shelves ! It was surely a colony of 
enlightened and public-spirited settlers who, as soon as food and 
shelter were secured, there in the heart of the wilderness, added 
to the rude life they hewed out of it life's inestimable ornament, 
literature. Ogden doubtless has a vastly more comprehensive 
and attractive library to-day ; but the value of such an institu- 
tion depends, after all, upon what we ourselves bring to it ; and 
it is well to remember that the few books that nourish vitally the 
eager mind are better than richly furnished alcoves amid which 
we browse languidly and loiter with indifference." 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 45 

Leather Stocking Tales, James's Richelieu and 
Henri Quatre, Croly's Salathiel, and Ingraham's 
Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf, and thought them 
all good. 

I read Byron with the greatest avidity, and be- 
came possessed of a copy of Scott's Lady of the 
Lake, whole pages of which — I might almost say 
whole cantos — I was soon able to recite from 
memory. I was even absorbed in Pope's Essay 
on Man, regarding it as the most perfect combi- 
nation possible of sublime philosophy and lucid 
verse. I read much of Shakespeare, and tried to 
read more. Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, 
Hamlet, Timon of Athens, and a few other plays 
interested me profoundly; but I could not get 
through Love's Labour 's Lost. As I look back 
now, I am surprised at the boyish audacity with 
which I criticised works so famous. The indecen- 
cies and whimsical conceits I found in the plays 
offended my taste, and I thought the tragical end- 
ing of Hamlet too melodramatic, although I did 
not have that word for what I felt to be forced 
and artificial in that homicidal scene. The rhymed 
endings of heroic blank-verse speeches made my 
heart sink. 

I went through a volume of Plutarch because I 
liked it, and Rollin's Ancient History because I 
thought it one of those things a well-informed 



46 , MY OWN STORY 

youth ought not to neglect. A similar sense of 
duty carried me over dreary tracts of Aiken's Brit- 
ish Poets, which I blamed myself for finding dull, 
and Pope's Homer, which I thought I ought to 
like for the reason that Homer and Pope were both 
celebrated poets. But the couplets that I found 
so cogent and convincing in the Essay on Man be- 
came monotonous in the Iliad, and left me un- 
moved. Of other books I remember reading at 
that age, I may mention Abercrombie's Intellec- 
tual Powers, Blair's Rhetoric, some volumes of 
the Spectator, the Arabian Nights and Gulliver's 
Travels, Locke's Essay on the Human Under- 
standing (abridged edition), works on Phrenology 
and Physiology, Paradise Lost, and the Pirate's 
Own Book. When I had money of my own I 
purchased books in Rochester, among others some 
volumes of a Bibliotheque Choisie de la Litera- 
ture Franchise, of which I best recall Alfred de 
Vigny's fine historical romance, Cinq-Mars. I 
procured Latin textbooks, and took up the study 
of that language, also without a teacher. 

Up to the time of my intellectual awakening, I 
had scarcely any clear conception of the use and 
meaning of English grammar, although I could 
parse fluently and recite all the rules. The study 
of another language threw a flood of light on the 
grammar of my own, like a lantern shining back- 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 47 

ward on a path one has been treading in the dark. 
My mind also awoke to the real value of other 
branches, of which only a parrot-like knowledge 
had been required of me hitherto. And " compo- 
sition " became a delight. 

XIII 

I began to write verses when I was thirteen, 
but I was accused by some of my mates of copy- 
ing them out of books, until I composed an acros- 
tic on the name of one of them. As it was a 
name Mrs. Hemans and Kirke White would hardly 
have cared to celebrate, even if they had heard of 
it, and as the ingenuity of altering any of their 
lines to suit it would have been considerable, the 
charge of plagiarizing was not pressed. 

After I was thirteen I attended only the winter 
term of the school, my services being required on 
the farm in summer ; but the teaching I missed 
was probably no loss to me when my mind had 
become independently aroused. In the hour's 
nooning with the books I loved, I have no doubt 
but I learned more than I should have done in the 
whole day's routine in school. I almost wonder 
now at the extent of my studies and readings 
while I was doing a boy's regular work on the 
farm. I was fond of sport, and liked to hunt 
and fish and play ball and fly kites as well as most 



48 MY OWN STORY 

boys. But I made a good deal of " odd spells " 
which others idled away. The men of learning 
and genius I read about, or whose writings I 
admired, caused in me pangs of despairing emula- 
tion, as I constantly contrasted their high achieve- 
ments with my own petty, unprofitable life. 

It was not alone the love of study that kept me 
at my books. I saw my companions give them- 
selves up to idle talk and amusement, and often 
wished that I might pass my days as carelessly as 
they. What was that inward scourge which chas- 
tised those shallower inclinations, and drove me 
back to my self-allotted tasks ? Many times I 
asked myself this question. I did not know then 
how much may be acquired in the course of a 
year by a boy engaged in almost any kind of work, 
who gives now and then a leisure hour to earnest 
reading and study without a teacher ; but I was 
finding it out by experience. 

I was in many respects fortunately situated, al- 
though I did not know it at the time. I thought 
it hard that I could not have the educational privi- 
leges which some boys at the Basin had, and 
which they scorned and wasted. I had a cousin 
on the Willey side living in Geneseo, where I 
visited him. His father was a lawyer, and the 
son had all the advantages of an academic course, 
and of a village life, simple enough, in fact, but 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 49 

cultured and elegant in comparison with my own. 
He was two or three years older than I, so learned 
that I hardly dared speak to him of my humble 
studies, and so well dressed that I was ashamed 
of my country clothes, as I knew he was, when 
his Geneseo friends saw him with me on the street. 
His position and accomplishments were so far be- 
yond anything I could hope ever to attain that I 
went home with a very poor opinion of my oppor- 
tunities, and might have been discouraged from 
my endeavors at self -improvement if I had not pur- 
sued it for its own sake, or if something within me 
deeper than discouragement and better than am- 
bition had not held me to my purpose. I was 
naturally indolent, and it was probably well for me 
that, instead of circumstances made easy for me, 
I had obstacles to overcome. 

My father never drove his boys or his hired 
men. I generally had a good part of a rainy 
day to myself, and often afternoons, when work 
was not pressing. I nearly always had a book 
handy which I could snatch up between whiles. 
I fear this habit was a source of annoyance to the 
family, and I can remember hearing the frequent 
question, "Where's John?" answered with tart 
impatience, " Oh, he 's got his nose in one of his 
everlasting books somewhere ! " I am sorry to 
say I did not always take my nose out as soon as 



5 o MY OWN STORY 

I should have done. My ambition did not invari- 
ably receive that encouragement from other mem- 
bers of the family which could have been desired. 
I was painfully impressed by what one of my sis- 
ters, five years older than I, once said of preco- 
cious boys, who know more at fourteen or fifteen 
than they ever do afterwards, adding, "I guess 
that is going to be the way with John." I don't 
suppose that this was really her opinion, but it was 
natural to think that any branching conceit in a 
younger brother should be kept well pruned. Not 
that I ever made a parade of my acquirements. 
I often wished that my reputation for reading and 
study had been less, in order that less might have 
been expected of me. I knew a little of so many 
things that I was credited with knowing many 
more, my ignorance of which was often a source of 
embarrassment and humiliation. 

XIV 

This studiousness on my part developed in me 
an independence of social excitements and a reli- 
ance on my own inward resources, as appeared in 
the way I spent the Fourth of July when I was 
fifteen years old. While every other boy in the 
town went to the " celebration," I remained at 
home, entirely alone, with no company but my 
books and my own thoughts. When I was tired 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 51 

of reading — for I had weak eyes, and could never 
use them long at a time — I went out into the field 
and hoed corn for an hour or two, an altogether 
voluntary task. Then I went back to my book 
and my frugal dinner which I prepared myself and 
ate while I read ; then returned and hoed corn for 
another hour in the afternoon. The exercise re- 
freshed me for the reading, and the reading made 
the open air and the sunshine and the society of 
cawing crows and wild hawks, sailing over, a re- 
newed delight. I think it was the happiest Fourth 
of July of my boyhood ; and I did not envy my 
brothers the uproarious fun they had to tell of 
when they came home at night. To spend an en- 
tire day in work seemed to me a wicked waste of 
time and opportunity ; but to break it up with 
intervals of reading and study, in this way, was 
my ideal of a farm-boy's life. 

In the way of literature everything was grist 
that came to my mill. I even have an affectionate 
recollection of two or three old-fashioned school- 
books. The Historical Reader had a new interest 
for me after I had read Ivanhoe, and it was the se- 
lections from Milton and Shakespeare in Porter's 
Rhetorical Reader that sent me to Paradise Lost 
and Hamlet. The brief extracts from the poets 
in Goold Brown's Grammar had for me an indefin- 
able charm. 



52 MY OWN STORY 

I was not particularly good in arithmetic, but 
algebra appealed powerfully to my understanding, 
and I had great pleasure in it. This I studied in 
school when I was fifteen and sixteen. 

One of my sisters had a copy of Burritt's As- 
tronomy and Geography of the Heavens, which I 
studied by myself, tracing out the principal con- 
stellations visible in our latitude, and learning 
pretty thoroughly all that was then popularly 
taught concerning the stars and the solar system. 
This was welcome food to my reason and imagina- 
tion. 

I was not, however, so bookish a boy as this con- 
densed and continuous account of my studies may 
seem to imply. They were for the most part done 
at odd spells, the summer's farm work, the night 
and morning chores in winter, sports and social 
recreations occupying always the greater part of 
my time. 

The weakness of the eyes I have mentioned 
was another hindrance. There was no trouble 
with the sight, and my mother used to say that 
they were as strong as any child's until I had 
the measles, which left them irritable and with a 
tendency to chronic inflammation. When I was 
twelve years old, I was sent to Dr. Munn, an ocu- 
list of some note, in Rochester, to have my eyes 
examined. He said there was nothing the matter 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 53 

with them but a slight congestion, which could 
be quickly remedied. I said that was what I had 
come for, and submitted to his treatment. He 
called an attendant to hold my head on the pad 
of the chair, and proceeded to pass a short curved 
lancet around each eyeball, between it and the lids, 
as coolly and with as little regard for my outcries 
as if he had been peeling onions. I was in his 
chair five minutes, and his fee was five dollars. 
As I had expected nothing more than a prescrip- 
tion, I had only a two-dollar note with me. He 
took the money from my pocketbook, which I 
blindly handed him, bound my handkerchief on 
my bleeding orbs, saying they would be all right 
in a day or two, and sent me home by the neigh- 
bor who had brought me, and who had witnessed 
the treatment, as much surprised at it as I was. 
I should n't have regretted the pain, intense as it 
was, if any good had come of it ; but it was weeks 
before my eyes fully recovered from that worse 
than useless operation. It may have done them 
no permanent harm, but it certainly did them no 
good. The irritability remained, always easily 
aggravated by over-use of the eyes, a cold, or 
much exposure to artificial light. And it has con- 
tinued, a very serious inconvenience, through all 
my life, interfering with my literary labors, often 
causing me to shun society and evening entertain- 



54 MY OWN STORY 

ments, and so, unfortunately, tending to confirm 
in me a natural inclination toward retirement and 
reverie. 

XV 

Although not the most useful lad on a farm, I 
liked certain kinds of farm work very well. Plough- 
ing was my favorite employment. I drove the 
team with the lines passed over my back and 
under one arm, and at fifteen turned a furrow, my 
father said, as well as any man. In those lonely 
but pleasant hours in the field, with no compan- 
ions but the kind, dumb, steady-going horses, I 
made a great many verses, which I retained in my 
memory and wrote down after the day's work was 
done. 

Tales and romances in rhyme, after the manner 
of Byron and Scott, I planned and partly com- 
posed in this way. It may be in consequence of 
the habit thus formed that few of the many 
verses I have written since have been composed 
with pen in hand. They have oftener come to 
me when I have been walking in the woods and 
fields, or by the waterside, or lying awake in the 
dark. 

I was lying thus awake when I composed the 
first of my pieces that got into print. I was six- 
teen years old, and was attending the winter term 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 55 

of the district school. The teacher had announced 
to our class, in dismissing us at night, that com- 
positions would be expected of us, and I thought 
it would be a novelty to write mine in rhyme. I 
did not decide on a subject until after I had gone 
to bed ; then the Tomb of Napoleon occurred to 
me. Before I slept I had shaped five nine-line 
stanzas in the metre of Childe Harold, which I 
wrote out and revised the next day. 

With the exception of an essay on the Disap- 
pearance of the North American Indians, full of 
wailing winds and moaning waters and other stock 
imagery befitting the subject, this was the most 
serious thing I had undertaken in the way of a 
school composition, and it was received with min- 
gled incredulity and astonishment. One boy of 
my age loudly declared that I could never have 
written a line of it. I said, " You have a good 
reason for thinking so." "What is that?" he 
eagerly asked. I replied, " Because you could n't 
have written a line of it yourself to save your 
life ! " 

It was much talked about in school and out ; 
and as much to my surprise as anybody's, it soon 
appeared in the columns of our county newspaper, 
the Rochester Republican. I never knew whether 
it was my father or the schoolmaster who sent it 
to the printers, but the author's initials were given, 



56 MY OWN STORY 

"J. T. T., of Ogden," with the extenuating phrase, 
" a lad of sixteen years," which did much to de- 
stroy any satisfaction I might otherwise have felt 
on first seeing my rhymes in print. It was cop- 
ied by a Chicago paper, accompanied by an edi- 
torial note comparing it with " the early produc- 
tions of Prior, Pope, and Chatterton," and calling 
attention to it as " an indication of what might be 
expected of the author at a more mature age." 
This was the first newspaper notice any lines of 
mine ever received, and it did no harm. 

Up to this time I had never quite dared to think 
that anything I might write was worth publishing. 
If I had secret dreams of becoming an author, 
they were scarcely acknowledged even to my- 
self. Shy and diffident, I did not show my most 
intimate friend, I did not reveal to one of my 
own family, the quires of foolscap I was spoiling 
with verses composed while following the plough. 
After the veil of my reserve had been lifted by 
that first publication, I began to send to the 
papers short poems occasionally, which appeared 
with my initials, but without the offensive refer- 
ence to the writer's tender years. 

I did the usual farm -boy's chores that winter, 
before and after school. I milked two or three 
cows, foddered the cattle and sheep, rode the 
horses to water, often chopping the ice out of the 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 57 

trough in cold weather, and shoveled paths through 
the drifts. I was naturally of a hopeful and cheer- 
ful disposition, and I remember that as a very 
pleasant winter. 

But in the spring I fell into an unaccountable 
melancholy. There had been talk of my continu- 
ing my studies and preparing for college, but it 
seemed that nothing was to be done about it that 
season. The school was over ; I thought I was 
accomplishing nothing ; I was wasting my youth ; 
I was in my seventeenth year ! The idea of an- 
other summer spent in farm work filled me with 
despair. 

I did not conceal my despondency; my folks 
called me sullen, and asked me what was the 
matter. The mere mention of my misery inten- 
sified it. I could not have told what ailed me ; 
I nursed imaginary woes. I was reading Byron 
again, and fancied myself akin to that stormy, dis- 
satisfied spirit. 

" I had not loved the world, nor the world me." 

There is no knowing how long this morbid state 
would have continued had not a real and over- 
whelming sorrow come to drive from my mind 
all unreal wrongs and causeless discontent. My 
father was stricken with an incurable and rapid 
disease, and died in May. This first intimate 



58 MY OWN STORY 

acquaintance with death and the anguish of sep- 
aration seemed suddenly to end my boyhood, while 
the great calamity changed all our lives. 

XVI 

My mother was left with the small farm of fifty 
acres, her three boys and one unmarried daughter 
still at home. The will provided that my elder 
brother, Windsor, then only nineteen, but an active 
and enterprising youth, fond of horses, cattle, and 
country life, should keep the homestead, while I 
should be free to stay or go, after I was seventeen. 

This arrangement seemed the best that could 
be made. My brother was quite unselfish about 
it. Taking me aside a few days after the funeral, 
he said I could have the farm if I wished it, and 
if I thought I could care as well for it and for our 
mother's interest in it as he could. He urged me 
to think it carefully over, assuring me that he 
would be satisfied either to remain or to go in my 
place. Now that the choice was left to me, leav- 
ing home became a more serious matter than it 
had appeared before, my future and his and our 
mother's more or less depending upon my decision. 
If I remained I was sure of a living, and I could, 
no doubt, always command some leisure for my 
favorite pursuits. On the other hand, a feeling of 
loneliness and uncertainty all at once oppressed me 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 59 

at the prospect of going out into the world un- 
guided, inexperienced, to make my dubious way. 
I consulted our mother, who said she would con- 
sent to whatever we desired ; it would be equally 
hard to part with either of us, and perhaps I 
might, after a while, get to manage the farm as 
well as he could, and do as well by our younger 
brother. So it was still left to me ; and I confess 
that I was half tempted to choose the immediate 
good and the more timid part, as I was to be more 
than once tempted to choose between the narrow 
certainty and the larger possibility, in the years to 
follow. 

After two or three anxious days and nights, 
courage and resolution came. I said, " It was 
father's plan ; he knew best. You are cut out for 
a farmer; I am not." I saw that Windsor was 
relieved. "But remember," he joined with our 
mother in saying, " this will always be your home 
whenever you wish to come back to it." 

I never went back to it, except for brief visits, 
after starting out to make my own way in the 
world ; and before many years it passed from his 
and her hands, to become the possession of stran- 
gers. My brother married at twenty-one, a step 
of which our mother approved, although she felt 
that thenceforward the home for which she had 
toiled so long and made so many sacrifices was no 



60 MY OWN STORY 

longer her home, as it had been from the time 
when her own hands helped to carve it out of the 
wilderness. It had a new mistress, as was fitting ; 
and where her own children had played, grand- 
children soon toddled about the door. My brother 
was a good farmer, but he had a restless disposi- 
tion. He grew tired of the farm and wished to 
sell it. She consented even to this heartbreaking 
sacrifice. His new home was to be hers, and the 
homes of her married daughters would always be 
open to her, but there was no other spot in the 
world like that where her very life had so long 
struck its roots ; and when these were uptorn, she 
felt that she was from that time forth a "sojourner 
in the land," as she used to say with Christian re- 
signation. 

Windsor tried two or three kinds of business, 
and finally settled down as a market gardener in 
Lockport, where we already had a sister living. 
Our mother's widowhood lasted thirty-eight years, 
— four years longer than the entire period of her 
married life. She died in Lockport in 1882, in 
her ninety-first year. Her constant prayer had 
long been that she might not outlive ner useful- 
ness, and that prayer seemed to have been granted. 
She retained all her faculties to an extraordinary 
degree, and was remarkably active until a fatal ill- 
ness, occasioned by a fall which crippled her ; but 




REBECCA WILLEY TROWBRIDGE 

The Atithor^s Mother at 36 



A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 61 

even in those last days she delighted to be doing 
bits of knitting or embroidery for some of her 
children or grandchildren, her perfect faith in a 
future life continuing to the close. 

Whether her later years would have had fewer 
trials if I, instead of my brother, had remained 
and kept the homestead, can never be known; 
but unquestionably it was better for me that I 
should go. 



CHAPTER II 

STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 



Being seventeen in September (1844), I went to 
live with my married sister, Mrs. Fidelia Phelps, 
in Lockport, for the purpose of attending a classi- 
cal school there. My brother-in-law was a farmer, 
tilling his flat and uninteresting acres of stiff, 
clayey soil, about half a mile west of what was 
then the village, acres now long since gathered 
under the brooding wing of the spreading city. 

The Lockport episode was quite to my liking ; 
I had a good home in the country, I had the vil- 
lage and the school. The canal, the water-ways, 
the mills, the business life, I was interested in all ; 
and, above all, in the locks. I passed the head of 
these twice a day on my way to and from school, 
and spent many a leisure half hour watching them. 
The opening and shutting of the gates, the pass- 
ing of the boats up and down, their swaying hulls 
rising or falling and bumping, as the powerful 
boiling and gushing floods were let in or out, filling 
or emptying the narrow and deep-walled cham- 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 63 

bers ; the characters of the boatmen and gatemen, 
and their varied movements through all the locking 
process ; — all this had for me an ever fresh fasci- 
nation. The Falls of Niagara were only eighteen 
miles away, and often in the still autumn weather 
I listened to their continuous, low, hardly distin- 
guishable roar, a sound that always breathed a 
quiet joy into my soul. 

The school was kept by a fairly good teacher, 
and was attended by about fifteen day pupils, vil- 
lage boys and young men. As a way-mark in my 
boyish studies I may state that I was far enough 
along in Latin to enter the advanced class and 
take up Cicero's Orations. Out of school I found 
an educated French-Canadian, who gave me pri- 
vate lessons in French pronunciation, and encour- 
aged my visiting his family ; this being my first 
practice in speaking the language. 

II 

It was in Lockport, when I was seventeen, that 
I first had the pleasure of earning something with 
my pen. A prize having been offered by the 
Niagara Courier for the best poetical New Year's 
Address of the carrier to his patrons, for Janu- 
ary 1, 1845, I determined to compete for it. I 
had never sent any verses to the Courier, although 
I walked by the office door every morning on my 



64 MY OWN STORY 

way to school ; but I had for some time wished 
to drop a contribution into its letter box, and I 
reasoned that, even if I did not win the prize, 
I might write something that would introduce me 
favorably to the editor. 

I soon composed and handed in a patriotic 
octosyllabic screed of some two or three hundred 
lines, with backward glances at Columbus and the 
Pilgrim Fathers, and forward glimpses into our 
country's future ; here a touch of the pathetic in 
alluding to the vanishing red men, and there a bit 
of the picturesque in describing Niagara Falls and 
the primeval forests. In a few days I summoned 
courage to call at the office and introduce myself, 
this being my first encounter with that superior 
being, an editor. He of the Courier seemed sur- 
prised at my boyish appearance, found some fault 
with the politics — or lack of politics — in my 
Address, which, however, he acknowledged to be 
the best that had yet been received, and promised 
that I should soon hear from him if the prize was 
awarded to me. 

Not hearing from him, I had quite given it up, 
when on New Year's morning I saw the carrier 
leaving a handsome printed sheet at the village 
doorways. In a tremor of doubt and expectation 
I ran up some steps on which it lay half open, 
and discovered, to my immense surprise and satis- 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 65 

faction, that it was my Address ! I shall never 
forget how well it looked lying there, with a rising 
sun for a heading, over the large numerals, 1845 ! 

I lost no time in procuring a copy, and oh, how 
well it read ! I had begun to think my verses 
poor stuff, but the sight of them in print, with the 
editorial approval upon them, — tossed on door- 
steps and under porches, with the morning paper, 
for all the town to read, — quite altered my opin- 
ion of their quality. 

Still not hearing from the prize, I let a few days 
pass, and then once more, with blushing cheeks 
and palpitating heart, climbed the Courier's office 
stairs. I may as well confess here that I was 
a blushing youth, with a good deal more courage 
for encountering actual danger than for meeting 
people whom my imagination made formidable. 
A monarch on his throne could hardly have been 
more formidable to me at that time than the edi- 
tor of the Niagara Courier. 

He turned from his desk, where he was busy 
with his morning's mail, gave me a glance of re- 
cognition, and kept on opening his letters. I 
supposed he would save me the embarrassment 
of explaining my business, but he did n't. 

"As I have not received the book," I said, " I 
have come in to inquire about it." 

The "book" was the prize, — a handsomely 



66 MY OWN STORY 

bound copy of Griswold's Poets of America, a 
work I was exceedingly desirous of possessing. 
To my chagrin I was informed that it had not yet 
been purchased, but that if I would call again in 
a couple of days it would be ready for me. I re- 
turned at the appointed time and was again put off. 

" Come in to-morrow," the editor said, " and I 
will have it for you." 

So once more I mounted his stairs. Still no 
book. Thereupon I grew indignant. For the 
moment I felt myself morally superior to the great 
man who was trifling with me ; and I told him 
that I should not trouble him again. As I was 
going out of the office he called me back, and tak- 
ing out his pocket-book, offered me in settlement 
of my claim a dollar and a half. As the edition 
specified would have cost twice as much, I felt 
that I had been circumvented ; but I had deter- 
mined never again to subject myself to the hu- 
miliation of seeming to beg for what rightfully 
belonged to me, and in a moment of indecision 
I was weak enough to take the money. I was 
straightway angry with myself for having con- 
sented to the compromise, and went away think- 
ing of the dignified and cutting things I ought 
to have said, after the opportunity had passed for 
saying them. 

Thus the triumph of receiving my first com- 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 67 

pensation for literary effort, like that of my first 
appearance in print, had its dash of unpleasant- 
ness ; a wholesome lesson, no doubt, to my youth 
and inexperience. I was early learning that there 
is little unalloyed satisfaction in this sphere of 
existence, whatever there may be in any other. 
There is ever a flaw in our good fortune ; just as, 
in our worst fortune, there is nearly always some- 
thing that may be changed by time and patience 
into a blessing. 

Even what remained to me of my self-com- 
placency on this occasion was extinguished a 
little later, when I reexamined my New Year's 
Address with a sickening doubt, an appalling ap- 
prehension, that it might be — that it must be — 
that it was — like my Tomb of Napoleon — mere 

bosh. 

Ill 

During a school vacation I took a run over to 
Pembroke, in Genesee County, to attend for one 
week a class in reading and elocution. A run it 
literally was. Pembroke village was twenty-five 
miles from my Lockport home, there was no 
public conveyance thither, and I made the jour- 
ney on foot, starting off one morning in high 
health and spirits, and getting through by sun- 
down ; — a brisk and exhilarating trip. 

The teacher of the class, a retired clergyman, 



68 MY OWN STORY 

was a good reader himself, simple and impressive ; 
but as he drilled us in imitative exercises chiefly, 
the week's tuition amounted to but little, with at 
least one pupil. Yet perhaps I ought not to say- 
just that. For, although the first principle of 
elocution, — namely, that freshness of percep- 
tion and feeling must precede and accompany 
all true expression, in order to assimilate the tone 
of reading to the tone of speaking, — although 
this foundation principle of naturalness and power 
was neglected, or insufficiently insisted on, some 
of his teachings, in the externals of the art, es- 
pecially in clear and correct enunciation, were 
excellent. I remember particularly an exercise in 
the sounds st and sts, which impressed me as 
so admirably adapted to overcome the common, 
slovenly habit of slurring or dropping entirely the 
/ in such combinations, that I give it here. These 
lines we were required to pronounce trippingly on 
the tongue : — 

" Amidst the mists, 

With stoutest boasts, 
He thrusts his fists 

Against the posts, 
And still insists 

He sees the ghosts." 

The school had been recommended to me by a 
prominent Pembroke citizen, who also invited me 
to his house for the week of my stay. This friend 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 69 

was Amaziah Jenkins, a relative of my Lockport 
relatives, a man of original ideas, an experienced 
educator, and an ardent abolitionist. He was 
moreover the first man I ever knew who had pub- 
lished a book ; a live author. This to my mind 
was a very great distinction, although the book in 
this instance was only an English Grammar. Fa- 
miliar daily intercourse with him was not merely 
encouraging to my self-confidence ; it was instruct- 
ive and mentally stimulating. He was ready to talk 
on all sorts of subjects that interested me, and 
on one that interested me but little ; for although 
I had a natural abhorrence of slavery, I had heard 
it preached against so much in our Ogden pulpit 
that I had grown indifferent to discussions of it. 
He liked to puzzle me with difficult grammatical 
questions, of which I recall a sample or two — 
how to construe "what" in the phrase, " He has 
more money than he knows what to do with," and 
" minutes " in "He was given five minutes for re- 
flection," — which latter construction has occa- 
sioned the shedding of much erudite ink, in recent 
years. 

He had in his chambers some barrels of books, 
mostly educational ; among which I found a trea- 
sure that I had the felicity (for it was nothing less) 
of carrying away with me at the end of my visit : 
all of Virgil in one volume, the original accompa- 



7 o MY OWN STORY 

nied by a transposed text with an interlinear trans- 
lation, — a work designed for teachers ; but as I 
was to so great an extent my own teacher, I felt 
that I was entitled to its help. I found it an in- 
valuable assistant, saving me an immense amount 
of time and labor in looking up definitions and 
coaching me over difficulties of construction 
which, without it, would have left me little 
strength or leisure for the enjoyment of the im- 
mortal hexameters. This was in fact the most 
precious acquisition I had to remember the Pem- 
broke incident by. 

At the close of the Lockport school, my Pem- 
broke friend urged me to try canvassing for an 
anti-slavery paper with which he had some con- 
nection. To this I reluctantly consented, not in 
order to help the cause he had at heart, but to 
earn money towards preparing myself for college. 
By the provisions of the will I had received fifty 
dollars from the old homestead on my seven- 
teenth birthday, and I was to have as much more 
the following September; but more than all I 
could hope to save from this would be necessary, 
if I was to continue my studies in an academy. 
So I agreed to the canvassing project. 

But I never really undertook it. So invincible 
was my repugnance to asking of anybody what 
might seem a favor to myself that I drew back 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 71 

from the first door I started to enter, and threw 
up my commission without having solicited a sin- 
gle subscription. As this was my first step in 
the direction of anything that looked like business, 
I was deeply chagrined at so inauspicious a com- 
mencement. In our boyhood, it was always my 
older brother who was the more eager to begin 
new enterprises, while I insisted more on the 
obstacles in the way ; but having entered into a 
scheme with him, I was the one to stick to it in 
the face of discouragements and to argue for its 
completion. But now I seemed to detect in my- 
self an infirmity of purpose that might prove a 
pitfall in the way of any success in life. 

Beside the necessity of earning something, I had 
another incentive to start out as a canvasser, — 
the desire to see new places. I gave up the can- 
vassing, but not the idea of travel. I had as yet 
seen but little of the world, but that little com- 
prised objects of interest and wonder that nour- 
ished my imagination, — the great woods in the 
shadow of whose mysteries and within the sound 
of whose roar my childhood was passed; the 
Genesee, and the falls at Rochester (falls indeed 
then, and strikingly picturesque, before the mill 
sluices drank them dry) ; Ontario, to my young 
fancy a boundless blue sea, as I stood upon the 
wave-washed shore ; then Niagara with its mighty 



72 MY OWN STORY 

cataract and wild cliffs and rapids ; even the canal 
and the Lockport locks ! And now came an op- 
portunity for seeing something of what was then 
the far West. 

IV 

My oldest sister and her husband, Daniel 
Greene (the Vermont schoolmaster), had been 
eleven years settled in their Illinois home, when in 
the summer of 1845 I determined to see the land 
she lauded so in her letters, — the land of the 
grouse and the deer, of prairie flowers and prairie 
fires, of grove-bordered streams and boundless 
horizons. Their westward journey had been made 
across Canada, the most practicable land route 
from Buffalo to Detroit in 1834. Our father and 
mother had both successively visited them, he 
partly by water and partly by stage-coach across 
Michigan (the roughest of stage routes), and she 
by schooner around the lakes, a voyage of nearly 
two weeks from Buffalo to Chicago. A line of 
steamboats had since been established between 
those two cities, and it was by steamboat that we 
(my unmarried sister accompanied me) made the 
trip by the lakes. 

I have forgotten how many days it took, but to 
my mind the voyage was not half long enough, 
and when our boat went hard aground in the 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 73 

St. Clair River, I remember experiencing some 
regret that with the help of a tug and stretched 
hawsers it was got off in the course of an after- 
noon. I have made I know not how many west- 
ern journeys since, but never another that I en- 
joyed with so much zest, or that I so vividly re- 
member. To this day I can see the large, tranquil 
fishes at the bottom of the deep, still, wonderfully 
clear water of the Straits of Mackinaw, where we 
lay two or three hours, and where I should have 
been delighted to remain as many days. 

Mr. Greene met us in Chicago, then a shabby 
city of eleven thousand inhabitants, plank side- 
walks, and unpaved streets, which became sloughs 
of mud in foul weather, and in which I was after- 
wards to see many a farm wagon stalled, with 
wheels sinking to the hubs in the mire. It had 
no attractions for me except the lake shore, 
which had not yet been ruled off by railroad 
tracks ; and after a day and a night at a hotel, I 
was glad to drive out across the flat, adjacent 
prairie and over the fine upland country beyond, 
to Nine Oaks farm, on the East Branch of the Du 
Page. What a welcome we received there, how 
our sister ran out to meet us as the wagon turned 
up to the gate, and hugged us and cried over us 
as she took us into the house, — these are memo- 
ries of the time, which cannot be dwelt on here. 



74 MY OWN STORY 

I found within sight of the house, between the 
skirting grove on one side and the river winding 
through the broad bottom-land on the other, the 
charms her facile pen had painted for my allure- 
ment ; and within an hour or two after our arrival, 
I was tramping, gun in hand, through my brother- 
in-law's buckwheat, scaring up and shooting — 
or, to be more exact, shooting at — prairie chick- 
ens on the wing. That very evening I saw my 
first deer, a lovely doe, in graceful leaps undulat- 
ing over the high grass of the bottom-land, going 
to drink at the river. 

V 

I did some work on the farm, the rest of that 
summer and in the autumn following, and some 
desultory studying and reading ; but spent more 
time ranging the woodlands and high prairies, on 
horseback or afoot, sometimes hunting strayed 
cattle by the sound of the bells, always a welcome 
music, when heard afar off over the fenceless hills, 
or in bushy underwoods. But oftener I hunted 
more interesting game, — chiefly prairie hens, and 
latterly deer, shooting of these, as I recall with com- 
punction, two ; one a fine buck, the sad story of 
which would be long to tell, the other a slender 
doe, that turned up at me such piteous, almost 
human eyes, as she lay bleeding at my feet, that 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 75 

I wished never to shoot another deer, and never 
did. 

There was one creature, common then and 
there, which I let pass no opportunity for destroy- 
ing. This was the prairie rattlesnake. Rather 
than suffer one to live, I would walk a long dis- 
tance for a club with which to finish it. I fully 
sympathized with the surveyor who, strolling away 
from his camp one evening, came upon a rattler 
on the open prairie. He had only his cigar in 
his hand, and there was neither stick nor stone 
within a mile. The coiled reptile presented so fair 
a mark that he felt sure he could kill it with his 
boot, which he pulled off for the purpose. The snake 
struck as he did, and in his nervousness he let 
the boot fall. It was then absolutely necessary 
to kill the snake in order to get back his boot ; so 
he pulled off his other boot, and lost that in the 
same way. The snake held the fort ; and there 
was nothing for him to do but to walk back to his 
camp, a good mile, in his stockings. 

Cattle, that would never pay the slightest at- 
tention to any other snake, would start violently 
aside at sight or sound of a rattler. This dread 
of the creature must have been instinctive, for it 
could hardly have been the result of individual or 
inherited experience ; it was not probable that the 
average ox, or any one of its progenitors, had ever 



76 MY OWN STORY 

received a venomous bite. My brother-in-law had 
a dog that exhibited the same instinctive repug- 
nance, but in a different way. If he came upon a 
rattler stretched out on the ground, he would 
make a dart at its neck, and shake it to pieces be- 
fore the deadly, fanged head had time to turn. If 
it had got into a coil, his attack was more circum- 
spect ; he would begin to walk around it at a safe 
distance, barking excitedly, his head toward the 
poised head of the reptile, causing it to follow his 
movements, until the coil was sufficiently un- 
wound, when he would make a quick dart, and 
— look out for the flying fragments ! How he 
ever learned this trick nobody knew. The de- 
velopment of the venom in the reptile and of the 
instinct in the animal would be, if one had the 
needful data, an extremely interesting study in 
evolution. 

The bite of the prairie rattlesnake is dangerous, 
but not necessarily fatal. I knew of one painful 
case. A boy killed a snake, as he supposed, and 
left it lying under a stone. The act was witnessed 
by a younger brother about three years old, who 
followed him home, and interrupted his story to 
say, " Snake bite me!" The older said, " That 's 
just his fancy; I killed it, and he wasn't any- 
where near it." The child insisted, " Snake bite 
me!" and, when it was late to apply a remedy, it 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 77 

was noticed that his hand was swelling. Hand 
and arm swelled frightfully ; the face and entire 
body turned dark purple; he fell into a stupor 
that lasted several days, and barely escaped death. 
It seemed that he had gone back to the snake 
after the older boy had left it, that he had moved 
the stone, and received a bite. 

The usual remedy was whiskey, and a popular 
one. So popular was it in fact, among a certain 
class, that one could readily believe what was said 
of impecunious topers, — that they would some- 
times get themselves bitten purposely, and then 
make appeal to the charitable-minded for the quart 
of cure. It took a deal of one kind of poison to 
counteract, in the system, a very minute quantity 
of the other. 

VI 

There was a pleasant society in the neighbor- 
hood, in which I found enjoyment, notably when 
snow came, and the weather was fine for sleigh- 
ing parties, — sleigh bottoms packed with hay and 
buffalo robes, and merry young people full of the 
inspiration of that new, free, western life. One 
Saturday afternoon two sleigh loads of us drove 
to Joliet, where in the cheer of a good hotel we 
took no note of time or of a change in the weather, 
and so became lost in a thick snowstorm, at night, 



78 MY OWN STORY 

on the open prairies, on our return drive of some 
fifteen miles. A furious blizzard was setting in ; 
and, though we had great confidence in the driver 
of our foremost sleigh, a sagacious and self-reli- 
ant young man, when he acknowledged to me 
that he had no idea where we were, I was im- 
pressed with the alarming prospect of our passing 
the night in our open sleighs, or under them, if as 
a last resort we turned them over, with the bot- 
toms canted against the driving storm. 

I suggested that if he could n't find the track, 
perhaps the horses might. He agreed, slacked 
the reins, and let the pair travel as they would. 
In the blinding snow it was impossible to discover 
any change in their course ; and, if their instinct 
was trustworthy, what soon followed was disheart- 
ening. Their steady trot fell off to a walk, then 
suddenly they stopped. There was some obstacle 
ahead ; it proved to be a fence. A solitary settler 
had inclosed his little home-lot of an acre or two, 
and, with no credit to the team, by sheer good 
luck we had struck it, when there were a score 
of chances to one of our passing it, and driving 
on over the storm-swept, limitless prairies. His 
hut was near by, — found after a little tramping 
and shouting ; we roused him up, and he set us 
on our way. 

That winter I was beginning, for the first time, 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 79 

to earn an independent livelihood. I taught the 
district school in my brother-in-law's neighbor- 
hood, — three and a half or four months, at twelve 
dollars a month and my board. The " board " 
meant " boarding around " in the homes of my 
pupils ; which again meant living a week or so at 
a time in the pleasantest of them, neglecting the 
others, and spending my Saturdays and Sundays 
and much other surplus time with my friends. 
Some of my best pupils were German children, 
whose parents had lately settled in that region, 
and who could speak hardly a word of English 
on entering the school. The rapid progress the 
brightest of these made in learning to read and 
write and speak a new language was something 
marvelous. Both the teaching and the boarding 
around among the better class of families were a 
novel and profitable experience ; I had an interest- 
ing little school, and I was sorry when it came to 
a close. One reason for my regret was, it must 
be acknowledged, a pecuniary one. " Twelve 
dollars a month and board " seems little indeed, 
but I had never earned wages before, and when 
should I have another opportunity of earning as 
much, and as easily ? 

In the spring my brother-in-law, to give me 
some encouragement in the way of business, I 
suppose, — certainly with no idea of advantage to 



80 MY OWN STORY 

himself, — made me an astonishing proposition. 
I had expected to return to the East in April, but 
both he and my sister urged me to remain with 
them another summer. Farm wages would have 
been hardly the thing for him to offer or for me 
to receive ; so he proposed that I should take 
some of his land to work " on shares." He would 
furnish seed, team, farming tools, everything but 
the work, which I was to do ; my compensation to 
be, as I remember, one third of the crop. The 
crop was to be spring wheat ; his corn and other 
crops he would raise, with the help of his hired 
man. Considering my age (eighteen) and a sad 
habit I had contracted of lingering too long over 
books, it was a surprising offer. The work I 
would have to do was what I liked best on a 
farm, — ploughing and harrowing, and harrowing 
again after the seed was sown ; I liked the coun- 
try and the neighborhood, and above all my sister 
and her family (Mr. Greene was one of the most 
upright and liberal men I knew, and one of the 
wittiest) ; I should be in one sense my own mas- 
ter and have some leisure for my studies. I con- 
sidered all these advantages, and consented, no 
doubt wisely, to his plan. 

After the crop was " in " I remained, waiting 
for it to mature, doing meanwhile some work for 
my brother-in-law, and reading (as I remember) 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 81 

Burns's poems, which I had found at the home of 
a friend, the Bucolics of Virgil, in the volume I had 
brought from Pembroke, and some German, hav- 
ing that year begun the study of that language. 
I recall but little regarding the wheat crop, ex- 
cept that it grew finely in that rich prairie soil, 
and gave fair promise of paying me well for my la- 
bor, until at a critical time, j ust as the milky berry 
was filling, there came a week of hot and humid 
weather ; the " rust " struck the rank stalks, the 
immature grains shriveled, and my hopes with 
them ; and my beautiful fields, although they 
turned duly from green to golden, produced but a 
poor and unprofitable crop. That was the last of 
my farming. 

I did not stay for the threshing, but returned 
to the East in August, visited my relatives in 
Ogden and Lockport, and in the autumn (being 
then nineteen) took a district school in Lockport, 
two or three miles north of the village. 

VII 

In my Lockport school I had about thirty pu- 
pils, of ages varying from seven or eight years to 
eighteen or twenty, two or three of the older boys 
being larger and taller than myself. I was warned 
that previous teachers — " masters " they were 
called — had had trouble with big boys in that dis- 



82 MY OWN STORY 

trict, and that physical energy and rigid discipline 
would be required to get through the winter term 
satisfactorily ; but I had faith that I could succeed 
as I had succeeded with my smaller Illinois school. 

From the start I found the older pupils, girls 
and boys alike, amenable to reason, and if I some- 
times had to inflict slight punishments on the 
younger ones, it was because their natural restless- 
ness and love of mischief were too strong in them 
for the undeveloped moral sense, and because no 
unassisted teacher in a school of that sort, miscel- 
laneous and ungraded, has time for persuasive 
measures only, in each particular case requiring 
discipline. I "boarded around" again, and that 
custom helped me to establish friendly relations 
with parents and pupils. 

I made the morning fires that winter, not merely 
because building fires was considered one of the 
master's duties, but for the advantages attending 
it. There was something indescribably exhilarat- 
ing in leaving my boarding-place as soon as I had 
eaten my breakfast, facing the frosty air, and 
tramping through the snow to the schoolhouse at 
the Corners ; starting a blaze in the cold, coffin- 
shaped stove, stuffing it full of wood, then sitting 
down before it in my cap and overcoat, with my 
feet on the hearth, and having an hour or more all to 
myself over my Virgil or Schiller or La Fontaine. 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 83 

Not a picture or frame of any sort relieved the 
dingy gray of the blank, plastered walls. The 
floor in places most trodden was worn to the sem- 
blance of shallow valleys, with ranges of miniature 
hills where the shiny heads of board-nails pro- 
tected it from abrasion. The benches were of 
the plainest, shiny-smooth in the part most ex- 
posed to friction, and the desk surfaces were 
diversified with intaglios not particularly ornamen- 
tal, boats, house-gables, tomahawks (the last was a 
favorite device), cut, or rather dug out, by juven- 
ile jack-knives. Yet though my surroundings 
were so unattractive, and so absolutely comfort- 
less but for the blaze my own hands kindled, I 
was oblivious of all that bleakness and bareness 
and ugliness ; I was in the domain of mind, with 
high thoughts and purposes for my companions. 
I look back now to that far-off time with envy of 
my own fine spirits and joyous youth ; and I lack 
words to tell how sweet to me was the seclusion of 
those morning hours in the cheerless school-room 
before the pupils came stamping in. 

The boarding-place I best remember was the 
house of a man named Gibson, who had three 
children in my school, — not half so many as I 
could have wished, since the more pupils there 
were in a family, the longer the master was en- 
titled to claim its hospitalities. Gibson was an 



84 MY OWN STORY 

educated Scotchman who had come to this coun- 
try as a civil engineer, and had finally settled down 
as a Niagara County farmer. He would spend a 
whole evening talking to me of Scott and Burns, 
and of one younger Scotch writer of whom he 
predicted great things. Burns he knew almost 
by heart; and he recited Tarn O'Shanter with 
amazing unction and animation. The younger 
author, who had been a friend of his early man- 
hood, a comrade and classmate, still wrote to him 
from Scotland quaintly entertaining letters and sent 
him all his books successively as they appeared. 
So desirous was he of interesting me in them that 
he offered to lend me any or all of them, and 
would, I have no doubt, if I had become his pro- 
phet's disciple, have presented me a volume, with 
the flyleaf inscription which I should be rather 
glad now to have — " From his friend, Thomas 
Carlyle." Although I was to come later under 
their powerful influence, I thought then I had no 
time for " Hero Worship," " Sartor Resartus," or 
the " French Revolution." Youth passes many 
such doors that stand ready to open for it into 
treasure-houses of golden opportunity. 

VIII 

The range of studies required to be taught in the 
ungraded district school of those days was some- 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 85 

thing preposterous, often extending all the way 
from the first steps in reading, writing, and num- 
bers, to higher arithmetic and grammar, including 
perhaps algebra, natural philosophy, and chemistry, 
the two last without any laboratory or apparatus. 
Mine being a winter term, I had no abecedarians, 
for which mercy I was grateful. Quill pens were 
in use, and during the half hour given to the writ- 
ing lesson the prevailing silence was broken by 
the scratching of nibs, and the altogether too 
frequent appeal, " Mend my pen, master ? Please 
mend my pen ? " Skill in pen-mending was one 
of the teacher's indispensable accomplishments ; 
he was likewise required to write the learners' 
copy. Mere drudgery much of this was, and it 
would have been intolerable to my youth and 
inexperience and sensitive nervous-sanguine tem- 
perament, but for the double necessity of doing 
my duty to those under my charge and of earning 
my humble salary — sixteen dollars a month, that 
season. Yet the pleasure I took in some of my 
work atoned for much of the annoyance attending 
the rest. I had classes in algebra and French, 
which were a positive satisfaction. The French 
was voluntary on my part, three or four of my 
advanced pupils having taken it up, at my sug- 
gestion, in place of chemistry. 

I had no serious trouble in governing the school, 



86 MY OWN STORY 

except on one critical occasion, when an act of 
haughty disobedience on the part of one of the 
older boys, taller if not heavier than I, resulted in 
a rough-and-tumble contest for supremacy on the 
school-room floor, in the presence of the amazed 
and frightened pupils. When we finally went 
down together, it chanced that I was a-top. It 
was even a more decided moral than a physical 
victory, for I felt that the sympathies of the entire 
school, even of the boy's brother and sister, were 
on my side. I have described a struggle very 
similar to this in one of my minor novels, " The 
Little Master," but between the actual circum- 
stance and the fictitious one suggested by it, there 
is this important difference, that in my own case 
the rebellious pupil's parents, as well as his brother 
and sister, sided with the teacher. After that, 
harmony reigned in my little realm, and I was 
made to feel in many ways the increased good-will 
of all the older scholars. 

IX 

The Lockport winter term was the last of my 
experience as a school-teacher. At its close I 
went to Brockport, a village on the Erie Canal, 
where there was an academy, with the intention 
of entering it. I entered it for one day ; or, more 
strictly speaking, for one hour. I saw the prin- 



STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 87 

cipal, whom I remember as a stocky man with a 
wooden leg, and talked with students who had 
been a year or two in attendance. When I learned 
how long they had been in traversing fields of 
study which I had passed, unassisted, in one half 
the time (more superficially, without doubt), how 
far in advance I was, in Latin, of the class I hoped 
to enter, and how far behind in Greek, and how 
little progress the routine of the term promised 
after all, I was dismayed at what, to my boyish 
conceit, appeared a treadmill process of education. 
The truth was, my desultory methods of study 
had rendered me impatient of what would have 
been, undoubtedly, a useful discipline. I had ideal- 
ized the academy, which I had longed for and 
looked forward to so long, fancying it something 
entirely different from the Lockport classical 
school ; and I found it a little more of the same 
sort, on a larger scale. With my habits of solitary 
application, I could do out of it all I could hope to 
do in it, and more in directions in which I wished 
to go. 

Then there was the important economic consid- 
eration. From my farming and teaching I had 
saved barely enough money to take me through 
the term ; and at its close I should have to go to 
work to earn more, either at farming or teaching. 
To neither of these occupations did I desire ever 



88 MY OWN STORY 

to return. I went out from the throng of students 
when the organization of classes had barely begun, 
and walked the streets of Brockport village in a 
deeply anxious frame of mind, until I had reached 
one of those momentous decisions which often 
mark a crisis in our lives. I would give up all 
thought of working my way through college, and 
face the world at once in search of fortune, if 
fortune there might be for one so ill prepared and 
of so uncertain aims. 

I hastened to the pleasant village home where I 
had engaged board for the term, and found, to my 
relief, that the room would be in request by other 
applicants ; packed my trunk, and hurried with it 
on board the first packet boat for Spencer's Basin ; 
returned to the Ogden homestead for a brief visit, 
and to put into shape some poems and sketches, 
a few in print but more in manuscript, which I 
had not yet been wise enough to burn ; then, on 
the tenth day of May, 1847, not Y et twenty years 
of age, I started for New York. 



CHAPTER III 

FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 



Traveling by packet boat on the Erie Canal, 
from Rochester, and by steamboat down the Hud- 
son from Albany, I arrived at the pier in New 
York at daybreak on the morning of May 15, 
1847. 

And what a daybreak it was ! The great river, 
the shipping, the mast-fringed wharves, the misty 
morning light, the silent streets of the hardly yet 
awakening city, the vastness and strangeness and 
mystery of it all, kindled my enthusiasm and made 
me glad I had come. In all that mighty metro- 
polis I knew not a single soul ; I brought no mes- 
sage to any one, not a letter of introduction ; I 
knew no more what was before me than if I had 
dropped upon Mars or the Moon ; but what of 
that ? Here was life, and I was young ! 

It was characteristic of my impressible and 
impulsive nature that I strolled about City Hall 
Park and down Broadway to the Battery, where I 
sat long on the benches, enjoying the novel scenes, 



9 o MY OWN STORY 

the sails and steamboats, the dashing waves, the 
cool breeze from the water, then crossed by ferry 
to Brooklyn and back, before I thought of looking 
for a boarding-place. Then I found one on the 
shady side of Duane Street, quite near Broadway, 
and not very far from the steamboat wharf, where 
I had left my trunk. In country fashion I knocked 
at the door, and wondered why nobody came to 
let me in. I was so green I did not know a door- 
bell. 

The door was opened by a smiling little doctor, 
who, I must do him the justice to say, continued 
to smile (perhaps he smiled all the more) when he 
learned that I had come for board and not for a 
prescription. He instructed me in the mysteries 
of the bell-pull, and a maid convoyed me upstairs 
to the landlady. It was a boarding-house "for 
gentlemen only," the " gentlemen " being for the 
most part dry-goods clerks, and young men — 
elderly men, too, as I was soon to discover — out 
of business and seeking employment. 

I had a roommate at first, a companionable 
fellow, who began at once to enlighten me in the 
agreeable vices of city life, offering to " take me 
everywhere." He was so well dressed and so 
frankly friendly, and the allurements he described 
were, from his point of view, such matters of 
course for any one privileged to enjoy them, that 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 91 

I did not realize at all that my first city acquaint- 
ance was a dangerous one. Indeed, he was not 
dangerous to me. I listened to him with curiosity 
and perfect toleration, and took one or two walks 
with him ; but soon withdrew from his society, 
simply because our tastes were not congenial, and 
I had aspirations to which his atmosphere was not 
the breath of life. I told our landlady that I must 
have a room by myself, or go elsewhere, — that I 
not only wished to write and study a good deal, 
but that the mere presence of a roommate was 
irksome to me. She gave me a small room with 
one window, high up in the house, — the conven- 
tional garret, in short, — and I was happy. 

What, after all, was the motive that had brought 
me to New York? That I had secret hopes of 
becoming an author is certainly true ; but I had 
not confided them to my most intimate friend, I 
scarcely dared acknowledge them to myself ; and 
I was not presumptuous enough to suppose that 
at the age of nineteen, ill equipped as I was for 
such a career, I could start in at once and earn a 
living by my pen. I carried with me my manu- 
scripts and books, and habits of study and compo- 
sition, in which I had satisfaction for their own 
sake, and which I fondly believed would reward 
me with happiness, if not fortune, in the near 
future ; but in the mean time I flattered myself 



9 2 MY OWN STORY 

that I was looking for some business of a practical 
nature. 

I answered an advertisement for a young man 
who wrote a good hand and knew something of 
accounts, and found a crowd of applicants at the 
place before me. I visited an employment office, 
which got my dollar on the false pretense of in- 
suring me a good situation within a week, but 
rendered me not the slightest service. I had 
cherished, like so many country boys, romantic 
dreams of going to sea ; I frequented the wharves, 
and observed the sailors, and was quickly cured 
of any desire to ship before the mast, but still 
fancied I would like to be a supercargo, or some- 
thing of that sort ; even a voyage or two as cabin 
boy might have its attractions. I had also heard 
of such a position as that of navy captain's secre- 
tary, which I thought would be peculiarly desir- 
able for a youth of some literary capacity wishing 
to see the world. One day, perceiving a man-of- 
war in port, and a fine-looking officer on the 
quarter-deck walking to and fro under an awning, 
I ventured on board, and accosted him, with all 
due respect, as I thought then, and as I still be- 
lieve. I have quite forgotten what I was starting 
to say, but I remember well the curt command 
that cut me short : " Take off your hat when you 
address a gentleman ! " uttered without discon- 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 93 

tinuing his walk, or turning his face, which he 
carried high before him. 

If he had hurled a binnacle at me, or a bow- 
anchor, or anything else naval and characteristic, 
I could not have been more astounded. Seeing 
that he wore his own cap (handsomely gold-laced, 
as I have him in my mind's eye still), and we were 
in the open air but for the awning, I could not 
possibly discover how I had merited so brutal a 
rebuff. I stared at him a moment, stifling with 
astonishment and humiliation, and indignant 
enough to hurl back at him anything in his own 
line, a capstan or a forecastle — I was too angry 
to make a discriminating choice. Fortunately I 
had sense enough to reflect that he was in his 
own little kingdom, and that if I was not pleased 
with the manners of the country the sooner I 
took myself out of it the better. I turned my 
back on him abruptly and left the ship, choking 
down my wrath, but thinking intently (too late, as 
was my habit) of the killingly sarcastic retort I 
might have made. Thus was quenched in me 
the last flickering inclination for a seafaring life. 

II 

Meanwhile I went about the actual, unpractical 
business which, unconfessedly, I had most at 
heart. I offered a volume of verses — in a variety 



94 MY OWN STORY 

of styles, derived from Byron, Scott, and Burns, 
with here and there a reminiscence of Hudibras — 
to two or three publishers, all of whom but one 
declined even to look at them (perhaps looking at 
the author's face was sufficient), telling me, kindly 
enough but firmly, that no book of poems unless 
written by a man of established reputation could 
possibly attract public attention. The one who 
did at last consent to examine my manuscripts 
returned them with even fewer words, no doubt 
thinking he had already wasted too many on a 
hopeless case. 

"I must make a reputation before I can get 
anybody to print my volume," I said to myself ; 
and I could see but one way of doing that. I 
selected some of the shorter pieces from my col- 
lection, and began offering them to the weekly 
papers, along with some prose sketches which I 
had brought from the country, or completed after 
my arrival. I did not find editors anxious to fill 
their columns with my poetry; and though my 
prose articles met with more favor, I was told 
even by those who expressed a willingness to 
print them that they did not pay for " such 
things." 

I was a shy youth, and it really required heroic 
effort on my part to make these calls on editors 
and publishers, and offer them my crude literary 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 95 

wares, which I was pretty sure to have handed 
back to me, perhaps with that cold silence so much 
more killing even than criticism to a young writ- 
er's aspirations. How often in those days I stood 
panting at an editor's door, waiting to still my 
heart-beats and gain breath and courage for the 
interview, then perhaps cravenly descending the 
stairs and putting off till another day the dreaded 
ordeal ! I could never forget those bitter experi- 
ences, which I trust made me somewhat tender of 
the feelings of literary aspirants when in later 
years it came my turn to exercise a little brief 
authority in an editorial chair. 

Rebuffs from other sources made me peculiarly 
sensitive to the first kind words of encouragement 
that I remember receiving in those days. I sup- 
pose I was all the more grateful for them because 
they came from one of those whom it required 
most courage to meet. In my boyhood I was 
overawed by imposing reputations; and in 1847 
Major Noah was one of the prominent men of New 
York. He had originated two or three daily 
papers, and was then editor and proprietor of the 
" Sunday Times." He had written successful 
plays, and was the author of. two or three books ; 
he had served his country abroad, and had, if I re- 
member rightly, been mayor of New York. He 
was an Israelite who aspired to be a leader of the 



96 MY OWN STORY 

Israelites ; and he had made himself widely talked 
about at home and abroad by his Utopian scheme 
of gathering his people together in a city of the 
Jews on Grand Island in the Niagara River. This 
New Jerusalem was actually begun, but never got 
much beyond a monument on the ruins of which 
could be read long afterwards the inscription : 
" Ararat, a City of Refuge for the Jews, founded 
by Mordecai M. Noah in the month of Tishri, 5586 
(September, 1825), and in the 50th year of the 
American Independence." He was a leading 
politician, and a well-known figure in New York ; 
large, portly, with strong, florid, Hebraic features, 
at that time a little over 60 years of age. 

To him, among others, I submitted a specimen 
of my verse. He looked up from his desk, in a 
small, littered room, where he was writing rapidly 
his weekly editorials for the " Times," and told me 
dryly that it would be of no use for him to read 
my poem, since he could not print it. 

" It may be of use to me, if you will take the 
trouble to look at it," I said ; " for I should like 
to have some person of experience tell me whether 
there is any chance of my earning money by my 
pen in this city of New York." 

"Anybody who wishes to do that must write 
prose and leave poetry alone," he replied. Where- 
upon I told him I had at my boarding-place an 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 97 

unfinished story I would like to show him. " Fin- 
ish it," he said, "and bring it to me. I shall not 
probably be able to use it, but I may direct you 
to somebody who can. At all events, I will tell 
you what I think of it." 

From the moment when he spoke to me I was 
relieved entirely of the diffidence with which I had 
approached him. When I went to call on him 
again I felt that I was going to see a friend. 
Meanwhile I had finished my story — the most 
ambitious thing I had yet attempted — and sent 
it to him. 

He offered me a stool beside his chair and laid 
out my manuscript on his desk. 

" Young man," said he, " I think you have it in 
you." I was speechless, shivering with joy. 
"This," pushing my poem aside, "is well enough ; 
you may get to write very good verse by and by. 
But don't write any more while you have to earn 
your living by your pen. Here is your strong- 
hold," laying his large but delicate hand on my 
story. " I have n't had time to read much of it, 
but I see that you have struck the right key, and 
that you have had the good sense not to make 
your style too dignified, but lively and entertain- 
ing. You have humor; you can tell a story; 
that 's a great deal in your favor." 

This is the substance of his kindly comment, 



98 MY OWN STORY 

which the novelty of the circumstance and the 
immense importance to me of the occasion im- 
pressed indelibly upon my mind. He then in- 
quired if I had any other means of support. 

"None, whatever," I replied, "unless I go back 
to farming or school-teaching, which I don't mean 
to do." 

" All the better," he said ; " necessity will teach 
you sobriety, industry, thrift. You will have to 
work hard; you will meet with a great deal of 
discouragement; but writing for the press is a 
perfectly legitimate profession, and if you devote 
yourself to it, there is no reason why you should n't 
succeed." 

I do not know that ever in my life any words 
had made me so happy as these. In subsequent 
days of struggle, when more than once I was on 
the point of flinging down my pen, I sometimes 
wondered whether they were wise for him to speak 
or good for me to hear. But now that more than 
half a century has passed, and I can look back 
upon my early life almost as dispassionately as if 
it were that of another person, I can thank him 
.again for the first authentic judgment ever pro- 
nounced upon my literary possibilities. 

" Come with me," he said, putting on his hat ; 
and we went out together, I with my roll of manu- 
script, he with his stout cane. Even if I had been 




MAJOR MORDECAI M. NOAH 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 99 

unaware of the fact, I should very soon have dis- 
covered that I was in company with an impor- 
tant personage. Everybody observed him, and it 
seemed as if every third or fourth man we met 
gave him a respectful salute. He continued his 
friendly talk with me in a way that relieved me of 
all sense of my own insignificance in the shadow 
of his celebrity and august proportions. Looking 
back upon myself now, through the glass of mem- 
ory, I behold a very different figure from that 
which retired so precipitately from the unman- 
nerly officer's quarter-deck hardly two weeks be- 
fore. One is a confident youth, stepping hopefully 
beside his noble guide and friend ; the other, an 
abashed and verdant boy. There seem to be 
two of me on those curiously contrasted occasions. 

Ill 

The Major took me to the office of a publisher 
in Ann Street, who did not chance to be in. He 
left my manuscript with a good word for it, and a 
promise to call with me again. Twice afterwards 
he took me to Ann Street with no better success. 
Such disinterested kindness, on the part of an 
old and eminent and fully occupied man, to a 
strange lad from the country, warms my heart 
again with reverence and gratitude as I think of it 
at this distant day. 

: LofC. 



ioo MY OWN STORY 

At last he gave me a letter of introduction to 
Mr. Williams, the Ann Street publisher, and ad- 
vised me to find him when I could. I did at last 
find him, with a smile on his face and my own 
manuscript in his hand, reading it with manifest 
amusement, when I handed him Noah's letter. It 
was a story, as I recollect, in some ten chapters, 
in which I had made an attempt to portray West- 
ern scenes and characters as I had observed them 
during my year in Illinois. After some talk about 
it, he asked me what price I expected to receive for 
it. I replied that I had not put any price upon it. 

" Major Noah," I said, "advised me to leave that 
to you." But as he urged me to name a " figure," 
I said I had hoped it might be worth to him about 
a hundred and twenty-five dollars. 

" Hardly that," he said, with a smile. " We 
have never paid so much for any writer's first 
story." 

" Oh, well," I replied, " name your own price." 

He named twenty-five dollars. That seems a 
ludicrous falling away from my figure, but I did 
not regard it as at all ludicrous at the time. 
Twenty-five dollars, as the first substantial earn- 
ings of my pen, was after all a goodly sum, for 
one in my circumstances, and vastly better than 
the return of my manuscript into my hands. 
That a production of my pen could be deemed to 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 101 

have any money value was a consideration that 
carried with it present satisfaction and hope in 
the future. I gladly accepted his offer, and saw 
him lay my story away on a shelf beside a number 
of others awaiting each its turn at the newspaper 
mill of novelettes attached to the publishing shop. 

Soon after that Major Noah took me to the 
office of Mr. Holden, publisher of "Holden's Dol- 
lar Magazine," so called because it was sent to sub- 
scribers for one dollar a year, although, as I found, 
it earned a still further claim to the title by paying 
its writers one dollar a page. An introduction by 
Major Noah insured me polite attention from Mr. 
Holden, who read promptly the story I offered 
him (a sort of backwoods adventure), accepted it, 
and printed it in his forthcoming number. These 
were the first contributions of mine ever accepted 
by "paying" publications. The Holden story 
was quite short ; it made only five or six pages, 
and I remember having to wait for my five or six 
dollars until it appeared between the covers of the 
magazine. It was copied into Howitt's " People's 
Journal," of London, and reprinted in many papers 
in this country, and was the cause of my indulging 
illusory dreams of a brilliantly dawning reputa- 
tion. 

After getting a second story accepted by " Hol- 
den's," and one by another periodical of some liter- 



io2 MY OWN STORY 

ary pretensions, of which I have forgotten even 
the name, I determined to devote myself solely to 
writing for magazines and newspapers. I have 
now to tell how, after I had given up all thought 
of seeking other employment, other employment 
sought me. 

IV 

Among the Duane Street boarders was an Eng- 
lishman of somewhat distinguished appearance, 
Dr. Child, with whom I soon became quite inti- 
mately acquainted, although he was my senior by 
about fifteen years. Perhaps we were all the more 
interested in each other because of the contrast in 
our early lives; he had been confessedly a pro- 
digal, and he told me of the opportunities he had 
wasted, while I confided to him mine, which I 
had shaped for myself against adverse circum- 
stances. His father had been a successful oculist 
in a provincial English town, in whose office he 
had had experience as an assistant, and upon 
whose death he had essayed to succeed him in his 
practice. Failing in that, and in several other 
ventures, he had come to this country with an 
eyewater which he hoped to transmute into a Pac- 
tolian stream. He had been some time in New 
York, looking for a partner in his enterprise, — 
the doctor to furnish the formula, as an offset to 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 103 

the ten or twenty thousand dollars necessary for 
the manufacture and advertising. 

He had a professional habit of scrutinizing peo- 
ple's optics, and perceiving signs of the chronic 
irritation in mine, he presented me with a bottle 
of Child's Magical Remedy (or Radical Remedy ; 
I have forgotten just what he called it, but one 
name is as good as another), which he guaranteed 
would cure them in ten days. This was the begin- 
ning of our friendship, which would have con- 
tinued till this time if it had lasted as long as the 
ailment has that he proposed to relieve. 

I had known him barely a month when he one 
day drew me aside to ask if I had a little money 
I could spare. "Not for making eyewater," I 
replied jokingly ; but he was profoundly serious. 
He went on to say that he had left a wife in Eng- 
land, that she had followed him to America (rather 
against his wishes, I inferred), and was then stay- 
ing with a relative in Hoboken. He was planning 
to set up housekeeping with her, and had selected 
a small tenement suitable for their purpose in Jer- 
sey City. But the furniture was all to be bought, 
and he was out of money. The Hoboken relative 
(an engraver of gold watch-cases and watch-dials) 
would help him a little ; but he needed about forty 
dollars more ; and could I accommodate him with 
that amount ? 



104 MY OWN STORY 

" I have as much," I said (I had just got my 
twenty-five dollars from the Ann Street shop), 
"but I shall probably need it to pay my board 
before I get more." 

"Advance me forty dollars," he replied, "and 
come and live with us and board it out ; " arguing 
that a quiet home, like the one offered me, would 
be much pleasanter, and better for my literary 
work, than the Duane Street boarding-house. 

I was easily persuaded, and handed over to him 
nearly all the money I had, rather rashly, as it 
seems to me now ; but although, in his role of 
oculist and self-styled " doctor," I considered him 
a charlatan, I trusted him as a friend. The house 
was furnished, and I went to live with the reunited 
pair, in very modest quarters in Jersey City. 
There I passed the rest of that summer quite com- 
fortably, taking long rambles on the Jersey side, 
a salt-water bath every morning on a tide-washed 
beach of the great river, and frequent ferry trips 
to New York. I had a good room to write in, with 
which indispensable convenience I felt I could be 
happy almost anywhere. 

In the shop of the Hoboken relative the doctor 
had learned to do a little ornamental work with 
the graver, chiefly on gold pencil-cases ; and some 
time in the autumn he set up a little shop of his 
own, in the back room at home. I used to sit by 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 105 

his table, watching him ; and one day, borrowing 
a graver and a strip of zinc, I amused myself with 
them while we talked. After a little practice I 
could cut his simple rose-petals and little branch- 
ing scrolls as well as he could, and soon found my- 
self working on the pencil-cases. Gold pencils 
were the fashion in those days, and as Christmas 
was approaching, he had more work than he could 
do without assistance. On the other hand, the 
periodicals I was writing for had accepted as many 
of my articles as they could use for some time to 
come, and, as I generally had to wait for my pay 
until the day of publication, I was in need of 
money, and glad of a chance to earn it. So, when 
he proposed to take me into partnership, I accepted 
the offer, bought a set of gravers, and settled 
down to the work, which was quite to my taste, 
and which, almost from the start, I could turn off 
as rapidly as he. It required something of a knack 
to make with a free hand the clean, graceful 
strokes, of varying width and depth, taking care 
never to cut through the thin material. 

Those were pleasant hours for me, in the small 
back room. The doctor was excellent company. 
He had done a good deal of miscellaneous reading, 
and seen a life as widely different from mine as 
his provincial England was distant from my own 
native backwoods and Western prairies ; and (if 



106 MY OWN STORY 

his wife chanced to be out of earshot) he delighted 
to impart to me his varied experiences. Some of 
these were not, from a moralistic point of view, 
particularly to his credit, but I was an eager stu- 
dent of life, and nothing human was foreign to my 
interest. 

His eyewater having failed to float his for- 
tunes, it is difficult to conjecture what would have 
become of the Jersey City housekeeping, and of 
me and my forty dollars, but for this industry, to 
which he was introduced by the Hoboken rela- 
tive. I boarded out his debt to me according to 
our agreement ; and through the connection thus 
formed I was by the middle of December earning 
two or three dollars a day at the trade picked up 
thus by accident. 

It was not solely to keep the work from seeking 
other hands, nor through good-will to me, that he 
took me into partnership. He was then getting 
his pencil-cases from the factories, and it was gall- 
ing to his sense of dignity that he, a professional 
man and a gentleman (an English gentleman, re- 
collect), should be obliged to go for them, and 
return them, and receive his paltry pay, like a 
common mechanic. 

After we became partners, I assumed the out- 
door duties, which were an agreeable change from 
plodding over the pencil-cases, the more especially 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 107 

as one of the factories was in New York, and 
crossing the ferries was a delight to me, in all 
weathers and at all seasons of the year. I can see 
myself now, on a wild winter's morning, watching 
from the bow — or, if there was too keen a wind, 
or snow or sleet driving, from a cabin window — 
the careening sloops, the diagonally-crossing ferry- 
boats, the foraging gulls, and the cakes of floating 
ice amid which our boat made its way. 

After Christmas, work was less plenty, and 
occasionally there was none at all. We now ex- 
perienced the disadvantage of not having acquired 
the handicraft by a more thorough apprenticeship. 
The New York factory, pleased with our pencil- 
cases, proposed to me to take silver combs to 
engrave ; and I remember how reluctant I was to 
admit that I had learned to do pencil-cases only. 
The surface of the high silver comb (such as ladies 
wore in those days) called for a breadth of treat- 
ment quite beyond my experience. The foreman 
thought I could do it, and, after my frank confes- 
sion, I was willing to make the trial. I took home 
one of the combs and carved on it a design that 
must have astonished him by its bold originality. 
I recall the peculiar smile with which he held it 
up and regarded it. I can also still imagine the 
galaxy of bright faces that would have been turned 
towards any lady venturing to bear that cynosure 



108 MY OWN STORY 

aloft on her back hair in any civilized assembly. 
It would have been just the thing for the Queen 
of Dahomey, or a belle of the Cannibal Islands. 
But the factory was not making combs for those 
markets. Blushing very red, I remarked, " I told 
you I couldn't do it." 

The foreman replied, " I guess you told the 
truth for once ! " 

We had a good laugh over it, which he probably 
enjoyed more than I did. I knew as well as he 
how grotesquely bad it was, and was surprised 
when he added, — 

" For a first attempt you might have done worse. 
You need practice and instruction." He then 
proposed that I should come and work in the 
shop, assuring me that I should be earning a good 
living in the course of a few weeks. He knew 
my friend's Hoboken relative, who was easily 
earning his seven or eight dollars a day by cutting 
miniature setters and pheasants, nests with eggs, 
and tufts of grass, on gold watch-dials, and thought 
I could do as well in time. The proposal was al- 
luring, and it required courage to decline it. But 
I had chosen my calling, and could not think seri- 
ously of another. 

Soon after that, the supply of pencil-cases ran 
so low that there was not work enough even for 
one ; so I withdrew from the partnership and re- 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 109 

turned to my writing, — which, indeed, I had never 
quite abandoned. I passed the winter pleasantly 
and contentedly enough. But one such winter 
sufficed. Then in spring the young man's fancy 
lightly turned to a change of boarding-place. 



One forenoon, as I was strolling on Broadway, 
not far above City Hall Park, I saw in a door- 
way the notice, " Furnished Room to let." There 
were similar notices displayed all over the city, 
and I must have passed several that morning ; but 
at that door, up a flight of steps (there was a wine 
store in the basement), something impelled me to 
ring, — my good genius, if I have one. It proved 
to be the one domicile in which, if I had thought 
of it beforehand, I should have deemed it espe- 
cially fortunate to be received. If I had sought 
it I should probably never have found it ; and I 
had come upon it by what appeared the merest 
chance. 

A French maid admitted me, and a vivacious 
Frenchman, who spoke hardly a word of English, 
showed me the room, and introduced me to his 
wife, a stout, red-faced woman, as voluble and 
friendly, and as delightfully ignorant of English, 
as himself. They seemed as happy at the pro- 
spect of having a lodger who could speak their 



no MY OWN STORY 

language a little as I was pleased to enter a family 
in which only French was spoken. They took no 
boarders, and the room alone — a good-sized one, 
up three flights, with an outlook on Broadway — 
cost two thirds as much as I had paid for board 
and lodgings together in Duane Street and Jersey 
City, — far too much for my precarious income ; 
but I could not let pass such an opportunity for 
acquiring a colloquial familiarity with the language 
I had as yet had but little practice in speaking. 
As I was to get my meals outside, I thought I 
could, when necessary, scrimp enough in that di- 
rection to offset the higher room rent. 

I hastened back to Jersey City, packed my 
books and baggage, and took leave of the friends 
in whose home I had been an inmate for about nine 
months. I was a home-loving youth, and it was 
always painful for me to sever such ties, even after 
they had become a little irksome ; but in this in- 
stance any regrets I may have felt were lessened 
by the immediate certainty of a desirable change. 
I was like a plant that had outgrown its environ- 
ment, and exhausted the soil which had for a sea- 
son sufficed for its nourishment ; and the very 
roots of my being rejoiced in the prospect of trans- 
plantation. 

I saw little of the Childs after the separation, 
and soon lost track of them altogether. I often 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER in 

wondered what had become of the doctor, with 
his eyewater, and his pencil-case engraving, so in- 
compatible with his English dignity, and of do- 
mestic Mrs. Child, with her dear little dropped k's, 
— into what haven they could have drifted, out of 
the fierce currents of our American life, which 
they seemed so incompetent to cope with ; but I 
never knew, until, some five and twenty years 
afterwards, a tall, elderly gentleman, with grizzled 
locks, and of rather distinguished appearance, 
sought me out, in Arlington. It was my old friend 
the doctor. He had come to make me a friendly 
visit ; but it seemed that it was, after all, partly 
woman's curiosity that had sent him ; Mrs. Child 
having charged him not to pass through Boston, 
where he had business, without learning for a cer- 
tainty if J. T. Trowbridge, the writer, and so forth, 
was the person of the same name who, when little 
more than a boy, had engraved pencil-cases and 
sat up late nights over his books and manuscripts 
in the Jersey City cottage. I was gratified to learn 
that they had found a port of peace, into which 
Providence itself seemed to have guided their 
bark, after many vicissitudes of storm and calm. 
They had at last found their proper place in an 
Old Peoples' Home, or some such institution, in 
Baltimore, not as dependent inmates, I was glad 
to know, but as superintendent and matron. I 



ii2 MY OWN STORY 

could hardly imagine a more ideal position for him 
with his affable manners and mild dignity, and for 
her with her strict domestic economy, — not too 
strict, I trust, for the inmates under their charge. 
Another quarter of a century, and more, has 
swept by since the doctor's visit, and the two 
must long since have fallen in with the procession 
of those who have entered that Home, from the 
world of struggle and failure, and, after a sojourn 
more or less brief in its tranquil retreat, passed 
on into the shadow of the Greater Peace. 

VI 

My Broadway landlord was M. Perrault, one of 
the best known members of the French colony in 
New York ; an accomplished violinist, and leader 
of the orchestra at Niblo's Garden. The family 
was as characteristically French and Parisian as 
the Jersey City household had been English and 
provincial. Although only a lodger, I was wel- 
comed at once to the small salon, and made to 
feel so much at home in it that from the first I 
spent much of my leisure time with the Perraults 
and their friends who frequented the house. The 
very first Sunday after my arrival I was invited 
to dinner, and made acquainted with French cook- 
ery, and that indispensable attendant upon it and 
promoter of good cheer, Bordeaux wine. There 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 113 

were only four at table, the two Perraults, their 
son Raphael, a boy of nine, and myself, the only 
guest. But it was a dinner of courses, — not very 
expensive, I judge, and certainly neither lavish 
nor ostentatious ; every dish simple, individual, 
and prepared in ways that were at once as novel 
to me as they were agreeable. Perrault was him- 
self an amateur cook, of a skill that might have 
qualified him as a chef, if he had not been making 
a good income more satisfactorily by conducting 
Niblo's orchestra, teaching the violin, and copy- 
ing scores. He was the inventor of a sauce Per- 
rault, which, Madame boasted, was popular among 
their New York compatriots, and even had some 
vogue in Paris. Every few days after that, me- 
morably on Sundays, he would come to my room 
and smilingly announce that he had given the 
finishing touches to the dinner, and had come to 
take me down with him, perhaps adding gentle 
force to urgent persuasion. If I remonstrated, 
" Not so soon again ; you are altogether too 
kind ! " he would assure me that my dining with 
them was considered by both him and Madame as 
a favor, and she especially would be desolee if I 
declined. Nor could I believe him in any way 
hypocritical ; there could be no motive for their 
proffered hospitality but the satisfaction there was 
in it for them and for their guest. They were 



ii 4 MY OWN STORY 

kind-hearted, fond of society, and ardent in friend- 
ship, and if their Gallic cordiality was sometimes 
effusive rather than deep, it was not insincere. 

I had been with them but a short time when 
another opportunity was opened to me, — golden, 
glorious, to an impecunious youth ! Might Per- 
rault have the pleasure of taking me to the thea- 
tre ? When Niblo's was n't crowded he could at 
any time smuggle in a friend. Of course I was 
enchanted to accept ; and well I remember the 
awesome mystery of the dim stage entrance, — 
his violin preceding him, as we passed the obliging 
doorkeeper, and I following, fast held by his other 
hand ; — then the tortuous way behind the scenes 
and under the stage, to a seat in the front row, 
near the orchestra (there were no orchestra stalls 
in those days). The house was filling rapidly; 
the musicians took their places ; quiet succeeded 
the rustle of music leaves and the tuning of in- 
struments, and suddenly, in an instant, what there 
was of me was converted into a bundle of thrills 
from head to foot, my joy in the music quickened 
by the novelty of the situation and the pride I 
felt in Perrault's leadership. 

The performance that followed was not by any 
means my first play ; but I had never before seen 
a great actor in a great part. The piece was 
Merry Wives of Windsor, and from that coigne 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 115 

of vantage, a seat in the front row, I for the first 
time beheld Hackett as Falstaff, to my mind then, 
and as I remember it still, an amazing perso- 
nation of the greatest comic character on the 
stage. Other good acting I witnessed that season 
at Niblo's, under Perrault's auspices, but every- 
thing else fades in the effulgence of Falstaff, 
and the rainbow hues of a troupe of ballet girls 
that came later. Could it have been any such 
troupe of frilled and lithe-limbed nymphs that 
Carlyle saw on a London stage, and scornfully 
described as " mad, restlessly jumping and clip- 
ping scissors " ? — those leaping and pirouetting, 
curving and undulating shapes, miraculous, glori- 
fied, weaving their dance, every movement timed 
to the strains of the orchestra, a living web of 
beauty and music ! For such indeed they were 
— not jumping scissors, in whirling inverted 
saucers ! — to my dewy adolescence. 

Among the advantages enjoyed in my new lodg- 
ing, I must not omit a large miscellaneous collec- 
tion, mostly in paper covers, of the works of 
French authors. It was not lacking in the earlier 
classics, but it was especially rich in the produc- 
tions of contemporary writers, novelists, drama- 
tists, poets, then at the zenith of their celebrity, 
or nearing it, — Sue, Balzac, Victor Hugo, George 
Sand, and her confrere, Jules Sandeau, Lamar- 



116 MY OWN STORY 

tine, Dumas, Scribe, Souli£, and a long list beside. 
These I read indiscriminately and with avidity, in 
days of discouragement and forced leisure, while 
waiting for my accepted articles to appear, or for 
others to be accepted by the periodicals I was 
writing for. My solitude was peopled and .my 
loneliness soothed by a world of fictitious charac- 
ters in Monte Christo and Les Trois Mousque- 
taires (I wish I could read them now, or anything 
else, with such zest !), Le Juif Errant (I had my 
own choice copy of Les Mysteres de Paris), Hugo's 
Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne, George Sand's 
Indiana, and, among others not least, Scribe's 
Pequillo Alliaga, a romance of adventure, eclipsed 
by the number and popularity of the author's 
dramas, but worthy, I then thought (I wonder 
what I should think now), to take rank with Le 
Sage's Gil Bias. Perrault was a scoffer at super- 
stition and prudery (I shrink from saying religion 
and virtue, which might perhaps be nearer exacti- 
tude), and he did not mind the risk of corrupting 
my youth by putting into my hands Voltaire's La 
Pucelle and Parny's La Guerre des Dieux. But 
the risk was not great. Something instinctive 
afforded me a duck -like immunity in passing 
through puddles. 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER H7 

VII 

It might have been possible for me to live by 
writing stories at one dollar a page or two dollars 
and a half a chapter, if I could have got them 
published after they were accepted or paid for 
when published. To widen my field, and secure, 
as I hoped, better compensation, I sent an essay 
to the Knickerbocker, then the foremost literary 
periodical in the country. It quickly appeared in 
those elegant pages, to which Irving and his com- 
peers had given character ; and full of confidence 
in this new vehicle for my productions, I went one 
morning to call on the polite editor. He received 
me cordially, appeared somewhat surprised at my 
youth, and assured me that the covers of his mag- 
azine would always be elastic enough to make 
room for such papers as that which I had given 
him. " Given " him, I found it was in a quite 
literal sense, for when I hinted at the subject of 
compensation, he smilingly informed me that it 
was not his custom to pay for the contributions of 
new writers. As he had rushed my essay into 
print without notifying me of its acceptance, or 
consulting me as to the signature I wished to have 
attached to it, and as I had purposely withheld 
the pseudonym under which I was writing for less 
literary periodicals, and had not yet begun to write 



n8 MY OWN STORY 

under my own name, he had published it anony- 
mously, so that I did not even have the credit 
of being a contributor to Knickerbocker. I was 
then using chiefly the pseudonym of Paul Creyton, 
which I kept for some years for two reasons, — 
first, because I was well aware of my work being 
only that of a 'prentice hand, and wished to re- 
serve my own name for more mature composi- 
tions ; and, second, as Paul Creyton grew in popu- 
larity, I found an ever increasing advantage in 
retaining so good an introduction to editors and 
readers. If I had put off using my own name 
until I was confident of doing my best work, I 
might never have used it ; so that, as it seems to 
me now, I might as well have begun using it from 
the first, — or rather, a modified form of it, writing 
it Townsend Trowbridge, omitting the J. or John 
for greater distinctiveness, and to avoid confusion 
of identity with any other Trowbridge. 

I can hardly remember now what periodicals I 
wrote for, or what I wrote ; but one story I recall, 
which I should probably have forgotten with the 
rest, if it had not come to light again, like a lost 
river, a few years later. It was a novelette in 
three or four installments, that was accepted by 
the Manhattan Flashlight (although that was not 
the name of the paper) with such unexampled 
promptitude, and in a letter so polite, complimen- 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 119 

tary, and full of golden promise, that once more the 
tide in my affairs seemed at the flood. Or nearly 
so ; each installment was to be liberally paid for 
when published, and the first would be put into 
the printer's hands immediately upon my accept- 
ance of the editorial terms. Accept them I did 
with joyful celerity ; then, having waited two or 
three weeks, I called at the publication office, only 
to find the door locked, and the appalling notice 
staring me in the face, " To Let — Inquire Room 
below." At "room below" I inquired with a sick 
heart, " What has become of the Flashlight ? " 
and was told that it had "gone out." The pro- 
prietor had decamped, leaving behind him nothing 
but debts ; and I could neither come upon his trail 
nor recover my manuscript. 

Two or three years afterward a Boston editor 
asked me how it chanced that I was writing a 
continued story for a certain New York weekly 
paper of a somewhat questionable character ; a 
paper I had never heard of before. It was my 
lost river reappearing in the most unexpected of 
desert places. I wrote to the publisher for expla- 
nations, and after a long and harassing delay was 
informed that he had received my manuscript 
with the assets of some business he had bought 
out (not the Flashlight), that I must look to his 
predecessor for redress, and that he would be 



120 MY OWN STORY 

pleased to receive from me another story as good ! 
He must have been lacking in a sense of humor, 
or he would have added "on the same terms." 
Redress from any source was of course out of the 
question. 

About this time, in Boston, I knew of a similar 
adventure befalling a story by an author of world- 
wide reputation. After the publication of The 
Scarlet Letter had made " the obscurest man of 
letters in America" one of the most famous, the 
gloomy but powerfully impressive story of Ethan 
Brand, which was written several years before, 
and had lain neglected in the desks of unappre- 
ciative editors, appeared as " original " in the col- 
umns of the Boston Literary Museum. Know- 
ing the editor, I hastened to inquire of him how 
he had been able to get a contribution from Haw- 
thorne. Complacently puffing his cigar, he told 
me it had come to him from some other office, 
where it had been "knocking around," that he 
did n't suppose it had ever been paid for, and that 
he had printed it without consulting the author. 
He rather expected to hear from him, but he 
never did; and it is quite probable that Haw- 
thorne never knew of the illicit publication. He 
must have kept a copy of the strayed Ethan 
Brand, which not long after appeared in author- 
ized form elsewhere. 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 121 

Among the few friends who used to climb to 
my third-story room on Broadway was old Major 
Noah, whom I can remember flushed and puffing 
like another Falstaff, as he sank into a chair after 
ascending those steep flights. He would stop on 
his way downtown, to give me a kindly greeting, 
and to inquire about my prospects ; he also gave 
me a little work to do in the way of translation 
from the French. He once brought me a volume 
of Paris sketches, from which, not reading the 
language himself, he desired me to select and 
translate for him such as I deemed best suited to 
the latitude of New York. The surprising simi- 
larity of the life of the two cities was exemplified 
by the fact that the translations I made were 
printed with but few changes in the columns of 
the Sunday Times, and served quite as well for 
New York as for Paris. I quickly caught the 
trick of adaptation, and soon had the pleasure of 
seeing those social satires appear in the Major's 
paper (anonymously, of course), with many local 
touches I had given them before they passed 
under his experienced pen. 

VIII 

Another good friend I had was Archibald 
McLees, an expert line and letter engraver, and a 
man of very decided literary tastes. I found his 



122 MY OWN STORY 

shop a delightful lounging place ; seated on a high 
stool, with his steel plate before him, in white 
light, he would talk with me of Dickens and 
Scott, Beranger and Moliere, turning now and 
then from his work, with an expressive look over 
his shoulder, to give point to some story, or a 
quotation from Sam Weller. We dined together 
at the restaurants, took excursions together (he 
knew the city like a native), and once went 
together to sit for our phrenological charts in the 
office of the Fowlers. The younger Fowler made 
a few hits, in manipulating our craniums ; but on 
coming away, we concluded that, except for the 
names written on our respective charts, it would 
have been difficult to distinguish one from the 
other. McLees had as much literary ability as I, 
according to the scale of numbers ; while I seemed 
fully his equal in artistic taste and mechanic skill. 
As the object I had chiefly in view, in consulting 
a phrenologist, was to get some outward evidence 
of my aptitude for the career I had chosen, the 
result was disappointing. Fowler's first words, 
in placing his hand on my forehead — " This 
brain is always thinking — thinking — thinking!" 
— led me to expect a striking delineation ; but I 
afterwards reflected that, like other remarks that 
followed, they would have applied equally well to 
any number of heads that passed under his obser- 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 123 

vation. He made a correct map of the country, 
yet quite failed to penetrate the life of the region, 
or to take into account the electric and skyey in- 
fluences which, quite as much as the topographi- 
cal conformation, cause each to differ from any 
other. About this time I went with a young man 
of my acquaintance to attend one of Fowler's 
lectures. My friend was a rather commonplace 
fellow, but he had a massive frontal development, 
and Fowler, who singled him out from the audi- 
ence and called him to the platform for a public 
examination, gave him a Websterian intellect. 
Websterian faculties he may have had, yet he 
somehow lacked the spirit needful to give them 
force and character. The mill was too big for 
the water power. 

I kept up a correspondence with McLees for 
some time after I left Boston ; a circumstance I 
had quite forgotten until one of his sons informed 
me, not long ago, that the family still preserves 
letters of mine written to him (O delicious salad 
days !) in French. I have no wish to see them. 

IX 

I carried out heroically enough my plan of re- 
trenching in other ways to offset, when necessary, 
my increased room rent. This necessity came 
not very long after my installment at Perrault's. 



124 MY OWN STORY 

I stopped buying books, but that was no great 
sacrifice as long as I had access to shelves crowded 
with the most attractive French authors ; and an 
evening now and then at Niblo's made it easy for 
me to forego other places of amusement. Then 
I could enjoy a band concert any fine summer 
evening sitting at my open window. 

To keep myself comfortable and presentable in 
the matter of dress was always my habit ; I bought 
nothing on credit (probably I could n't have done 
otherwise if I had tried) ; and I should have felt 
dishonored if ever my laundress delivered her 
bundle and went away unpaid. So that there 
remained only one direction in which my expend- 
itures could be much curtailed. 

I had begun with three meals a day at the res- 
taurants, which I soon reduced to two, then a few 
weeks later to one, and finally on a few occasions 
to none at all. I did n't starve in the mean while ; 
on the contrary I lived well enough to keep my- 
self in the condition of excellent (although never 
very robust) health, which I enjoyed at all sea- 
sons, and at whatever occupation, through all my 
early years. Hungry I may have been at times, 
but no more so, probably, than was good for me, 
and never for long. When I could n't afford a 
meal at the restaurants I would smuggle a six- 
penny loaf up my three flights and into my room 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 125 

(I was ashamed of this forced economy), with per- 
haps a little fruit or a wedge of cheese. This I 
might have found hard fare, and unsatisfactory, 
had it not been sauced with something that made 
up for the lack of luxuries : a pure and wholesome 
light wine, vin ordinaire, which through Perrault 
I could get in the store downstairs at the import- 
er's price of a shilling a bottle (twelve and a half 
cents). With a glass of this I could always make 
a palatable meal off my loaf and fruit ; the worst 
feature being the solitariness of it, and the absence 
of that which renders a frugal repast better than 
a banquet without it, friendly converse at table. 
In this respect the restaurant was not much bet- 
ter, except when I had a companion at dinner, 
which was n't always convenient ; so that I soon 
became weary enough of this unsocial way of 
living. Sometimes I hardly knew where the next 
loaf was coming from ; but then I would get pay 
for an article in time to keep me from actual want 
and out of debt ; or I would raise money in 
another way that I shrink from mentioning, not 
from any feeling of false pride at this distant day, 
but on account of the associations the memory of 
it calls up. 

When necessity pressed, I would take from my 
modest collection the volumes I could best spare, 
and dispose of them at a second-hand bookstore 



126 MY OWN STORY 

for about one quarter what they had cost me, yet 
generally enough for the day's need. One night 
I even passed under the ill-omened sign, that 
triple emblem of avarice, want, and woe, the 
pawnbroker's three balls ; an occasion rendered 
memorable to me by a painful circumstance. I 
parted with a flute that I had paid two dollars and 
a half for when I had a boyish ambition to be- 
come a player, and which I was glad to pledge for 
the cost of a dinner when I had given up the 
practice and did n't expect ever to resume it. 
The money-lender's cage had two wickets open- 
ing into the narrow entry-way ; while I paused at 
one of these, the slight, shrinking figure of a 
woman all in black came to the other, and pushed 
in, over the worn and greasy counter, a bundle 
which the ogre behind the bars shook out into a 
gown of some dark stuff, glanced at disapprov- 
ingly, refolded, and passed back to her with a sad 
shake of the head. She had probably named a 
sum that did not appeal to his sense of what was 
businesslike ; and she now said something else in 
a choked voice, in reply to which he once more 
took in the garment, and gave her in return a 
ticket, with a small coin. A wing of the little 
stall where she stood had concealed her face from 
me while she was transacting her sorrowful busi- 
ness, but I had a full look at it as she went out, 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 127 

and so pinched with penury and wrung with dis- 
tress did it appear, that a horribly miserable and 
remorseful feeling clutched at my vitals, as if I 
were somehow implicated in her calamity, and 
ought to put into her hand the two or three shil- 
lings (whatever the sum may have been) that I 
had received for the flute. I should have been 
happier if I had done so. I was young, stout- 
hearted, patient with ill fortune, if not quite defi- 
ant of it, and sustained by the certainty that my 
need was as temporary as it was trivial; while 
hers, as I fancied, was a long-drawn desolation 
that only death could end. Her image haunted 
me, and for many days and nights I could never 
pass a pawnbroker s sign without feeling that 
clutch at my heart. 

The band concert I have spoken of should also 
be enumerated among the advantages of my Per- 
rault lodging. Opposite my room, but a block or 
two farther down Broadway, was the Cafe* des 
Mille Colonnes, a brilliant house of entertainment, 
with a balcony on which an orchestra used to play, 
on summer evenings, the popular airs of the 
period, to which I listened many a lonely hour, sit- 
ting by the window of my unlighted chamber, 
" thinking — thinking — thinking ! " The throngs 
of pedestrians mingled below, moving (marvelous 
to conceive) each to his or her " separate business 



128 MY OWN STORY 

and desire ; " the omnibuses and carriages rumbled 
and rattled past ; while, over all, those strains of 
sonorous brass built their bridge of music, from 
the high cafe balcony to my still higher window 
ledge, spanning joy and woe, sin and sorrow, past 
and future, all the mysteries of the dark river of 
life. Night after night were played the same 
pieces, which became so interwoven with the 
thoughts of my solitary hours, with all my hopes 
and doubts, longings and aspirations, that for years 
afterward I could never hear one of those mellow, 
martial, or pensive strains without being immedi- 
ately transported back to my garret and my crust. 

X 

I wonder a little now at the courage I kept up, 
a waif (as I seemed often to myself) in the great, 
strange city, a mere atom in all that multitudinous 
human existence. I do not remember that, even 
at the lowest ebb of my fortunes, I ever once lost 
faith in myself, or a certain philosophical cheerful- 
ness that enabled me then, as it has always since, 
to bear uncomplainingly my share of rebuffs and 
discouragements ; I never once succumbed to 
homesickness or thought of returning to my fur- 
rows. I have only grateful recollections of those 
times of trial, which no doubt had their use in 
tempering my too shy and sensitive nature, and 
in deepening my inward resources. 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 129 

This way of living could not have continued 
long before it was relieved by a change as welcome 
as it was unexpected. Although I managed some- 
how to pay my room rent when due, the Perraults 
must have suspected my impecuniosity, for their 
invitations became more and more frequent, until 
I found myself dining with them three or four 
times a week. If this hospitality had meant only 
social enjoyment and a solace to my solitude, it 
would have been pure satisfaction ; but it had for 
me, moreover, a money-saving significance that 
touched my self-respect. So I remarked one day, 
as I took my customary seat at their table, that I 
could n't keep on dining with them so often unless 
they would consent to take me as a boarder. Be- 
fore this they had declared that they would not 
receive a boarder for any consideration ; I had 
now, however, come to be regarded as one of the 
family, and they readily acceded to my proposal. 
One of the family I then indeed became, and as 
intimate a part of their French menage as I had 
been of the English household in Jersey City. 

It was a rather rash arrangement on my part, for 
the terms agreed upon, though moderate enough 
in view of the more generous way of living, made 
my weekly expenses nearly double what they had 
been at Dr. Child's or in Duane Street, and this 
at a time when I had only a vague notion as to 



i 3 o MY OWN STORY 

how I was to meet them. That my horror of debt 
should have permitted me to rush into this indis- 
cretion is something I can hardly explain. Circum- 
stance led me a better way than prudence would 
have approved ; I obeyed one of those impulses 
that seem often to be in the private counsels of 
Providence, and are wiser than wisdom. I had 
had enough of the restaurants, and bread eaten in 
secret had ceased to be pleasant. I felt no com- 
punctions in exchanging those useful experiences 
for French cafe au lait and French cookery, a 
more regular home life, and daily good cheer. 

I became more at ease in my mind as to money 
obligations ; and from that time I do not remem- 
ber to have had much difficulty in meeting them. 
The Perraults trusted me implicitly, and were 
always willing to await my convenience when my 
weekly reckonings fell in arrears. Perrault over- 
flowed with good-fellowship, and with a vivacity 
akin to wit; and Madame had but one serious 
fault, — that which accounted for her too rubicund 
complexion. Quite too often, after the midday 
lunch, poor little Raphael was sent downstairs with 
her empty bottle, to be filled at the wineshop be- 
low with something more ardent than Bordeaux 
or Burgundy. I was fain to go out when I saw 
the cognac come in, to take its place beside snuff- 
box and tumbler, on her sitting-room table ; but 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 131 

would sometimes be persuaded to sit with her 
while she sipped and talked, and took snuff and 
grew drowsy, and then perhaps in the midst of a 
sentence dropped asleep in her chair, to awaken 
not seldom in an ill temper that vented itself on 
poor little Raphael if he chanced to be near. At 
other times she would be as indulgently good to 
him as became a mother ; and me she always 
treated with the utmost courtesy and kindness. 
I never had a word of disagreement with her save 
on a single topic ; in the discussion of which she 
herself unconsciously presented a living argument 
on my side, — an argument, however, that I could 
not with propriety adduce. I would never unite 
with her in lowering the contents of the bottle. 

XI 

Meanwhile I was enjoying increased facilities 
for acquiring a colloquial familiarity with the 
French language. When I entered the house I 
could read and translate it readily enough, and 
I had gained a good accent from my French- 
Canadian teacher in Lockport ; but I spoke it 
stiffly and bookishly, and it was difficult for me to 
follow a rapid and careless enunciation. In a com- 
pany of French-speaking people I would lose a 
large part of the conversation that was not ad- 
dressed directly to me. But I was passing happily 



i 3 2 MY OWN STORY 

through that transitional stage, and getting a prac- 
tical use of the language that was to be of ines- 
timable value to me all my life. I may add here 
my belief that in no other language is the disad- 
vantage so great of having first learned it by the 
eye only, and not by the ear ; often in such a case 
the ear never quite catches up with the eye in 
understanding it. 

I was so well satisfied with my later domestic 
arrangements that I rested in the comfortable 
feeling that they would continue indefinitely. 
But they were to be suddenly interrupted. 

I had been with the Perraults only about five 
months as a lodger, and the latter half of that 
time as a boarder, when another of those circum- 
stances that override our plans took me away from 
them and from the city. In August of that year, 
1848, — fifteen months after landing on the pier, 
early that May morning, from the North River 
boat, — by the advice of a literary acquaintance I 
made a trip to Boston, chiefly for the purpose of 
securing new vehicles for my tales and sketches, 
in the periodical press outside of New York. My 
cheery " Au revoir ! " to my French host and 
hostess proved to be a final farewell. I found 
the latitude of Boston so hospitable to those light 
literary ventures that I prolonged my stay, and 
what was at first intended as a visit became a 
permanent residence. 



FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 133 

Thus ended, before I was yet twenty-one, the 
New York episode of my youth. I had not ac- 
complished what I secretly hoped to do, I had 
passed through trials and humiliations, and tasted 
the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
But I had come out of the ordeal with courage and 
purpose undiminished, a heart unscathed by temp- 
tation and unembittered by disappointment. My 
first stumbling steps were no doubt better for my 
discipline and right progress than the leap I 
vaguely aspired to make at the outset. It is well 
that we cannot always bend the world to our will ; 
and I long since learned to be thankful that no 
publisher was found undiscerning enough to print 
my first thin volume of very thin verse. 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 



" Take me to a good boarding-place," I said to 
the cabman who picked me up on my arrival in 
Boston that morning in August, 1848; and he 
set me down at No. 33 Brattle Street, in an ancient, 
unattractive quarter of the city. Indeed, all that 
part of Boston through which our wheels rattled 
over the rough cobble-stone pavements impressed 
me as unattractive, if not ancient ; and I could n't 
help comparing the narrow, crooked streets, into 
the midst of which I was whirled and dropped, 
with Broadway, which my windows had looked out 
on for the last five months, and to which I had 
grown strongly attached. 

"Never mind," I said to myself consolingly; 
" I shall stay here only a couple of weeks." 

No. 33 was near the lower end of the street, 
three or four doors from the Quincy House, which 
popular hostelry has long since taken in that and 
other adjoining brick buildings in its successive 
extensions. Just beyond that was the old Brattle 




BRATTLE STREET CHURCH 
Showing, cannon-ball 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 135 

Street Church, which had quartered a British 
regiment during the siege of Boston, and still 
showed conspicuously, imbedded in the masonry 
over the door, the twenty-four pound iron ball, 
from a rebel cannon at Cambridge, that struck 
the brick front the night before the evacuation. 

The boarding-house was kept by Mrs. Kit- 
tredge, a widow, who received me with such mo- 
therly kindness and made me so comfortable 
that I felt well satisfied to pass there the days of 
my exile from the Perrault manage and French 
cookery, while seeing the city and transacting my 
business with the editors. The longer I stayed 
in Boston the better I liked it. I quickly discov- 
ered the harbor and the two rivers that united to 
form it ; the Common, like a patch of beautiful 
country on the skirt of the town, and the Public 
Garden beyond, then a garden only in name, an 
unfilled lower level, with made land and raised 
streets on three sides, and a broad embankment 
on the fourth, fronting Charles River, and fencing 
out the tides. That embankment presented an 
attractive walk. 

I found the Boston weeklies ready to accept 
about everything I had to offer, and set gleefully 
to work to furnish the sort of contributions most 
in demand. " Stories, give us stories ! " said they 
all ; and stories they had from me from that time 



136 MY OWN STORY 

forth. The pay was small, indeed, but I had no 
longer any difficulty in getting my articles pub- 
lished. The most flourishing of these papers 
paid its writers only two dollars a column, or one 
hundred dollars for a novelette running through 
ten or twelve numbers. Some paid only half 
those rates, while others kept to "the good old 
rule, the simple plan," of paying very little, or 
nothing at all, relying for contributions upon 
amateurs who were not only eager to write for no- 
thing, but who aided largely in the support of at 
least one so-called "magazine," by interesting 
their friends to subscribe for it, or to buy the 
issues containing their articles. 

So I settled down for the fall and winter in 
Boston, and with deep regret wrote to the Per- 
raults, giving up the room they had retained for 
me, and sending for such effects as I had left in 
their keeping. Thus closed my twenty-first year. 

II 

One of the best of the Boston weeklies of 
those days was the Olive Branch, a semi-religious 
family paper, to which I became a frequent con- 
tributor, and to the readers of which I became so 
favorably known that in the summer following, 
1849, I was invited to join a party in an excursion 
to Moosehead Lake, with the understanding that 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 137 

I was to write for that paper letters descriptive of 
the region visited, then in the heart of the wilds 
of Maine. I was ever ready for any adventure, 
and few things could have delighted me more 
than the prospect of this one, in which I was to 
see strange scenery, with agreeable companions, 
and find, among the woods and waters of that wil- 
derness, congenial subjects for my pen. I have 
quite forgotten to what steamboat, or stagecoach, 
or hotel interest I owed this privilege ; it was 
probably a combination of such interests ; for, as 
I remember, I had no fares or other expenses to 
pay during the two or three weeks of that memo- 
rable journey. 

Among my fellow travelers there were two of 
whom I cherish an affectionate remembrance. 
These were old Father Taylor, the pulpit orator, 
and Mrs. Taylor. He was then in the meridian 
of his powers, one of Boston's celebrities, and a 
striking personality. I had heard him preach at 
the.Seaman's Bethel, not because I cared much for 
preachers and sermons, — not having then recov- 
ered from the aversion to them with which my 
early experience had inspired me, — but because 
nobody in those days could be said to have seen 
Boston who had not seen and heard Father Tay- 
lor. His sermons were never learned or dog- 
matic, but wonderfully earnest and direct, often 



138 MY OWN STORY 

illustrated by quaint nautical metaphors (he had 
followed the sea in his youth), and enforced by a 
" terrible gift of familiarity " that brought him 
heart to heart with his hearers. These were 
largely composed of men from the wharves and 
ships, with their families and friends, to whom he 
did incalculable good, in shaping their paths to- 
ward sober and righteous living. 

He was then near sixty years old, but his seamed 
and tawny visage made him appear much older ; 
rather short of stature, but active, and as full of 
enthusiasm as a boy. He was certainly a more 
ardent fisherman than the youngest member of 
the party ; for, as I recall, when our little Moose- 
head steamboat swung around under the stupen- 
dous overhanging rock of Mt. Kineo, and, having 
once looked up in awe and astonishment, I turned 
to witness the effect on Father Taylor, I beheld 
him, not gazing upward at all, but down at the 
water, with rod in hand, watching his line, which 
he had flung over for a bite as soon as the paddles 
were still. He joined in the camping-out and 
moose-hunting by night, and was as eager as any 
of us to get a shot at the noble game, as our deftly 
paddled canoes glided into the mouth of some 
stream, and we heard the clash of boughs where 
the animals crossed or came to drink, but never 
within range of our guns. 



EDWARD T. TAYLOR (FATHER TAYLOR) 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 139 

The fame of the great preacher's advent went 
abroad in the wilderness, and drew a large con- 
course of people to hear him when he preached 
from the deck of the steamer at Greenville, the 
Sunday after our arrival. " It seemed " (to quote 
his own words) " as if God had shaken the woods 
and hills to bring his people together." I re- 
mained to note the strange audience that had 
gathered from nobody appeared to know where — 
pioneer settlers and wood-choppers, hunters and 
trappers and guides, half-breeds and Indians, 
stage-drivers, steamboat-men and tourists, with 
many women and children ; — then, having heard 
enough of the sermon to write a notice of it, I 
stole away to my room in the hotel to indite my 
Olive Branch letter. 

It was known to the members of our party that 
I did not stay through the services, and it occa- 
sioned some comment, which I regretted, fearing 
to wound my venerable friend, not in his minis- 
terial vanity, if he had any, but by inspiring in 
him a pious concern for my soul. That "con- 
cern" was a subject which, in my boyhood, I had 
conceived an invincible repugnance to hearing dis- 
cussed ; and I congratulated myself that in all our 
daily intercourse since we left Boston, Father 
Taylor had never once inquired whether I had 
met with a change of heart. He would probably 



i 4 o MY OWN STORY 

now infer that I had not. That Sunday evening, 
after I had finished and folded my letters, a rap 
came upon my door, and I could hardly have told 
whether I was pleased or disturbed, as, on open- 
ing it, I met the genial but serious countenance 
of the old preacher. 

" Young man," he said, " it 's a fine evening, 
and I want a little walk and talk with you. Will 
you come ? " 

" With pleasure ! " I responded ; and it was 
with pleasure indeed that I strolled and conversed 
with him, during the summer twilight hour, on the 
wild and lonely shore of the lake. He inquired 
about my boyhood and my life in Boston, and 
talked of our trip, yet never once edged toward 
the topic I dreaded to have introduced. At last, 
as we were returning to the hotel, he said, — 

" Young man, there 's one thing I want to im- 
press upon you. There 's nothing like being pre- 
pared." He paused and confronted me, with the 
twilight gleam from the clear sky and the reflec- 
tion from the water lighting his benign counte- 
nance, furrowed by long experience of the world's 
sins and woes. "We are enjoying a blessed op- 
portunity, and must make the most of it. We are 
to take an early start up the lake in the morning, 
and what I suggest is that we should have our 
fishing-tackle, bait, everything needed for the 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 141 

day s sport, on board the steamboat before break- 
fast." 

How I loved the dear old man at that moment ! 

During the summer my mother came on from 
Western New York to visit me in Boston. I met 
her in Framingham, my father's birthplace, where 
we had relatives, and brought her back with me 
to my Brattle Street boarding-house. I had re- 
solved not to go home until I was assured of suc- 
cess in my chosen vocation ; and she had not seen 
me for over two years. It had been my habit to 
send her everything I wrote, and to keep her con- 
stantly informed as to my varying fortunes, so 
that she felt but little concern regarding my moral 
and material circumstances ; but she yearned to 
behold her " absent child " once more, and to see 
with her own eyes how he was living and the kind 
of company he kept. She appeared contented 
with me in every respect, except that she wished 
I would go to church more regularly and " write 
more poetry." She stayed with me a few days 
at No. 33, and we did not meet again for another 
two years. 

Ill 

Among our Brattle Street boarders was Charles 
Chadwick, a native of Nantucket, who, like Father 
Taylor, had seen much of the world's sins and 



i 4 2 MY OWN STORY 

woes, but from a different moral point of view. 
He wore a blue broadcloth swallow-tail coat, with 
metal buttons (high style in those days), and was 
always carefully groomed, from his blond hair 
combed sleekly over his full, low forehead, to his 
well-polished boots. He had a noticeable stoop 
in his shoulders, and another peculiarity not so 
noticeable, but which I discovered when I helped 
him off with his boots, on a memorable occasion. 
There was only bare skin visible inside of them ; 
he had never worn socks since he ran away to sea 
at sixteen, and, he assured me, he never had cold 
feet. He was extremely social, and an entertain- 
ing humorist and story-teller, qualities that at- 
tracted me from the first ; and as he flattered me 
with his attentions (he was twice my age), we soon 
became friends. 

He called himself a "ship-broker." When I 
asked what a ship-broker did, he told me he was 
just then trying to sell, for its owner, an old brig- 
antine that had once been " turned out to grass," 
but which had latterly been repaired and fitted up 
for the voyage around Cape Horn ; the newly de- 
veloped Calif ornia " gold craze" having produced 
a scarcity of vessels suitable for that trip. He was 
asking eleven thousand dollars for the brigantine ; 
and, as he further informed me, if he found a 
purchaser at that price, his commission would 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 143 

amount to eleven hundred. I thought it would n't 
take many such sales during the year to insure 
a ship-broker, of no very extravagant habits, a re- 
spectable livelihood. 

I was quite astonished therefore when he one 
day imparted to me confidentially the fact that he 
was temporarily a " little short," and that he would 
be ever so much obliged if I would lend him fifty 
dollars ! I replied that I had n't more than half 
that sum in the world. I was getting not more 
than one or two short articles a week published 
and paid for ; and while this was better than I 
had been doing at one time, my expenditures had 
proportionally increased. 

By no means discouraged, he replied : " It 's 
low water with me now, and twenty-five will tide 
me over a few days, probably until I can close 
the dicker for the brigantine. Fact is, my board 
bill is in the doldrums, and I 've got to raise the 
wind somehow ! " 

I never could withstand an appeal of that sort, 
and after some demurring, I ended by doing as I 
had done in the case of my earlier friend, Dr. 
Child ; I gave him all the money I could con- 
veniently get together, although I saw no advan- 
tage to myself in the transaction, but considerable 
risk. It seems a curious circumstance to me now, 
that one impecunious as I often was should have 



i 4 4 MY OWN STORY 

been a frequent lender of small sums, but never a 
borrower. These sums were usually repaid, al- 
though I recall one boon companion, who held a 
clerkship in the office of the collector of the port, 
receiving a salary amounting to three times my 
modest income, yet who was chronically "dead 
broke," and was always borrowing omnibus fares 
and other trifles, too insignificant ever to be men- 
tioned again between friends. Another carried 
his borrowing practices so far as to go to my room 
in my absence, and help himself to my linen. 
When he said to me once, apologetically, " I sup- 
pose you were surprised that I didn't return that 
shirt I borrowed;" I replied, " Not at all ; I should 
have been surprised if you had returned it." After 
I had been so far prospered as to be able to place 
a small deposit in a savings-bank, the father of a 
family once besought me for a loan of sixty dollars. 
When I told him, to my sincere regret, that I had 
no such sum at command, he made answer that 
his quarter's rent was due, that he had been un- 
able to collect some bills he had relied on to make 
up the needful sum, and he didn't know which 
way to turn, if I could n't help him. 

" I have n't it," I repeated ; " but " — I thought 
of my poor little savings-bank deposit, and of a 
family man's natural distress on being unable to 
pay his rent — "I might possibly raise it for you." 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 145 

Although I knew there would be a loss of ac- 
cumulated and prospective interest if I withdrew 
my money from the bank, and I could not think 
of taking interest from a friend, his expressions of 
gratitude paid me in advance for any such sacrifice. 
I went at once and drew the sixty dollars, which 
I handed him without saying how I had come by 
it. Here paid me in a week or two, thanked me 
warmly, and added this naive remark : — 

" If you hadn't lent me the money, I should have 
had to take it out of the savings-bank, and have 
lost the interest." 

I smiled, and held my peace. There are plea- 
santer experiences than to have one's satisfaction 
in a friendly act dashed by the discovery that one's 
good-nature has been imposed upon, or that one 
has been too weakly obliging. 

IV 

Such, however, was not my experience with the 
ship-broker. I loaned him more money when I 
had it, and was useful in keeping his board bills, 
at least, out of the " doldrums," until he came to 
me one evening in my room, in a flush of excite- 
ment. The dicker for the brigantine had been 
closed, the money paid over, and he had got his 
commission. He took from his pocket a fat roll 
of banknotes, counted out his debt to me on my 



146 MY OWN STORY 

writing-table, in the lamplight, and vowed eternal 
gratitude and friendship for the accommodation ; 
with more effusion of speech and moisture of the 
eyes than seemed to me quite necessary, or befit- 
ting the occasion. In my innocence I deemed the 
success of his sale sufficient to account for the glow 
he was in ; but I did not yet know Chadwick. 

" I 've waited an unconscionable while for this 
let-up," he said, " and now we 're going to cele- 
brate it." What he really said was, " cerebrate it ; " 
for I noticed that his tongue was a little thick. 
" Come along out ! " and he clutched me by the 
arm. 

When I asked what he proposed to do, he said 
he was going to take me to see somebody in 
" Macbeth ; " but that we had time to " splice the 
main brace " first. Then the truth dawning upon 
me, I remarked, " You have spliced the main brace 
once or twice already ! " 

" That 's straight as a handspike ! " he admitted. 
" I 've kept steady as a Chinese junk for over two 
months, and now it 's time to shake out a reef or 
two." He used nautical metaphors, especially 
when he was "cerebrating," as freely as old 
Father Taylor did in his sermons, but to a dif- 
ferent purpose. 

Finding it impossible to persuade him either to 
remain with me or to go directly to the theatre, 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 147 

leaving the main brace without further splicing, I 
accompanied him, very reluctantly, with an un- 
quiet feeling that he was to be taken care of and 
brought safely home ; and — to be brief, omitting 
details, it was the closing incident of that night's 
too wild and lurid experience, that the absence of 
socks became apparent, on the pulling off of his 
boots. One of us went to bed sober, but that one 
was not the man from Nantucket. He had had 
what he called a " cruise." 

Cruises of this kind were, I found, periodic with 
him, though of not very frequent occurrence. I 
never again attempted to steer his course in one 
of them, or to bring him into haven, when he had 
his " three sheets in the wind." It was undoubt- 
edly this unfortunate habit that had separated 
him from his family (he was a married man), and 
hindered him from that success in life which his 
talents and social qualities might otherwise have 
attained. 

It did not, however, hinder him from following 
up the brigantine business with another venture 
of a maritime character, in which I became espe- 
cially interested. He found a moneyed partner 
to join him in fitting out on their own account a 
vessel, the Minerva Jones, for the voyage around 
the Horn ; he avowed his intention of sailing in 
her, and offered me a free passage if I would go 



148 MY OWN STORY 

with him. I gladly accepted, believing I could 
do well by writing letters for the Olive Branch 
and other Boston papers, and gain a useful ex- 
perience, even if I failed to make a fortune in the 
California gold fields. I have often wondered what 
would have been the effect on me and my literary 
work if I had gone to the Pacific Coast at that 
early day. 

The Minerva Jones was advertised for freight 
and passengers, and the date of sailing announced. 
I shaped all my plans for sailing in her, looking 
forward with hope and glee to the sea voyage and 
strange adventures in a new land. The day ar- 
rived, and the Minerva Jones still lay at the 
wharf, awaiting freight and passengers that were 
for some reason slow in occupying her hold and 
berths. There were repeated postponements, and 
I remember that Chadwick had to board one of 
his passengers for some weeks at a hotel, and keep 
him entertained, in order not to lose him and his 
merchandise, which had already been got aboard. 
When at last the Minerva Jones actually swung 
off into the stream, I had engaged in another 
enterprise, that detained me, for good or ill, in 
Boston. Thus I missed my chance of becoming 
a "forty-niner." 

Chadwick also remained behind, but went to 
California later ; and when next I heard from him, 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 149 

through a friend who knew him in San Francisco, 
he had " made a fortune and lost it." He was then 
past sixty, and it was late in life for him to make 
another. I fear it was thenceforward " low water " 
with him, and that all the voyage of his life was 

" Bound in shallows and in miseries." 

But there is a tide that flows at last for all. 

Twenty -five years after the Minerva Jones 
incident, the chief actor in it reappeared, not to 
my outward eyes but to my inward consciousness, 
and became a vivid presence, while I sketched his 
sometimes too vivacious and convivial traits in the 
minor novel, Fast Friends. I described a few of 
his actual jocosities and improvidences and in- 
vented others in keeping, shifting the scene from 
our " No. 33 " to my old Duane Street boarding- 
place in New York. In writing fiction I could never 
hold back my fancy from expanding and idealizing 
a character taken from life ; and in the develop- 
ment of this story Manton, put on the easel for 
Chadwick, became a suggestion rather than a por- 
trait. 

V 

The enterprise that kept me in Boston was a 
new weekly paper, for which two other parties 
furnished the capital and I (as they were pleased 
to term it) the "brains." For reasons of policy 



150 MY OWN STORY 

they preferred to be "silent partners" as far as 
the use of their names was concerned. One was 
interested in another publication of which the new 
paper was to be in some sense a rival. The third 
party was Hotchkiss & Co., newsdealers, who 
could not give their imprint to the new sheet 
without danger of prejudicing the proprietors of 
numerous other publications sold over their coun- 
ters. So it was determined to issue the paper 
under the firm name of "J. T. Trowbridge & Co." 
I remonstrated strongly against this, not only on 
account of my youth and inexperience (I was then 
barely twenty-two), but because I aspired to be 
known solely as a writer. However, as I could 
still keep my nom de plume unspotted from the 
world of business, I suffered my judgment — and 
I can truly add, my modesty — to be overruled. 
As an equal partner I was to be entitled to one 
third of the profits when there were any ; mean- 
while I was to draw a small salary, sufficient for 
my living expenses, on account of my editorial 
work, and receive additional pay for such tales and 
sketches as I chose to contribute. The name of 
the new weekly was The Yankee Nation, a title 
not of my choosing. 

I found in my new position other advantages than 
the one my friends were inclined to joke me about, 
— that of always having my contributions accepted. 




J T. TROWBRIDGE 
A t the age of 21 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 151 

It afforded me, indeed, an independence of the 
whims of editors, and made me one of the judges 
on the bench before which I had hitherto appeared 
only in the crowd of clients more or less humble. 
It gave me free access to concert halls and thea- 
tres, and I was surprised and flattered when some 
of the great publishing houses began to send me 
their books for notice, and to quote The Yankee 
Nation as authority in advertising them. Better 
than all this, I had steady employment ; while in 
the use of the office pastepot and scissors, and in 
reading manuscripts and proofs and conferring 
with contributors, I experienced at least partial 
relief from the hot-house process of forcing the 
imagination for ideas, to which the writer must 
often subject himself who depends for a livelihood 
solely upon his pen. I still wrote a great deal, 
however ; altogether too much for my own good, 
I am sure, and probably for the paper's ; being 
always ready to supply a story, long or short, or 
to fill space for which no fit contribution was 
offered. What I wrote must have been often 
very poor indeed, but to my mind now, as I look 
back, the marvel is that it was no worse. 

I formed a pleasant acquaintance with contribu- 
tors and friendly relations with a few. I was care- 
ful never to treat anybody with the coldness and 
curtness with which I had often been treated by 



152 MY OWN STORY 

editors ; while, young as I was in appearance and 
in years, there seemed small danger of my over- 
awing the humblest, as I had been overawed. 
Nevertheless, I was sometimes embarrassed by 
the robes of imputed dignity that invested my boy- 
ishness in the editorial chair. I recall an instance 
which a ghastly subsequent circumstance im- 
pressed on my memory. 

VI 

I had hardly had time to adjust myself to the 
novelty of my situation, when one morning in the 
latter part of November, 1849, a spare, thin-shoul- 
dered, very plainly dressed old gentleman entered 
the office to see about getting into the paper an 
article that had been left with me a short time 
before. It was not his own composition, but a 
descriptive letter from some foreign land, written 
by a young person in whom he was interested. It 
was a relief to learn that he was not a decayed 
author in need of earning a few dollars, as his 
appearance at first led me to suspect. When I 
handed the manuscript back to him, expressing 
regret that I could n't use it, he remarked depre- 
catingly that he did not expect to receive pay for 
it, even intimating that he would be willing to pay 
something for its insertion. As I could not ac- 
cept it even on those terms, he went off with an 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 153 

air of disappointment, having spoken all the while 
in a low tone, and treated me with a deference 
that mightily amused the foreman of the printing- 
room who witnessed the interview. 

" Do you know that man ? " he said excitedly. 
"He could buy out this shop and every other news- 
paper on the street, without putting his hand very 
deep into his pocket either ! " He went on to say, 
" That is Dr. Parkman, one of the richest men and 
best-known figures in Boston ! " and he laughed 
at the idea of his coming in that meek manner to 
ask me to accept a manuscript. 

I was surprised, but should probably have never 
thought again of the incident but for the shocking 
circumstance already alluded to. 

Dr. George Parkman was a retired physician, 
brother of Dr. Francis Parkman, the eminent 
Unitarian divine, and uncle of the younger Fran- 
cis, the future historian, who was to make the 
name illustrious. The old doctor was reputed 
eccentric and close in his dealings, yet he was a 
philanthropist in his way ; it was he who gave the 
land for the Harvard Medical College in Boston, 
and he had published a treatise on insanity and 
the treatment of the insane, — an author, after 
all, though not of the class I at first surmised. 
This venerable citizen went out from my office 
and, that day or the next, mysteriously disap- 



154 MY OWN STORY 

peared, — so soon, in fact, after our interview that 
I fancied I must have been one of the last persons 
who saw him alive. 

The sudden and unaccountable vanishing, in an 
afternoon, in an hour, of " one of the richest men 
and best-known figures in Boston," was the won- 
der of the town, until that feeling was changed 
to amazement and horror when his dissevered and 
half-destroyed remains were discovered in the 
laboratory of Professor John White Webster, of 
the Medical College. Webster had an amiable 
and highly esteemed family ; he was a professor 
of chemistry, a writer on scientific subjects, and 
a person of high position in social and scientific 
circles. He was arrested, tried for the murder, 
and convicted. When it was too late he made a 
confession that might have lightened the gravamen 
of the charge against him if it had been made in 
time. According to that statement, the old doc- 
tor, on that last afternoon of his life, had come to 
the professor's office to collect a debt about which 
there had arisen some annoying difficulties, and 
by his overbearing insistence and angry denun- 
ciations had provoked from Webster a fatal blow. 
Instead of proclaiming at once the crime, commit- 
ted, as he averred, in the heat of passion, Webster 
concealed and cut up the body, burned portions 
in the furnace, and had the rest in hiding, await- 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 155 

ing destruction, when he was exposed by the 
janitor. Despite all the influences brought to 
bear, to save the guilty man from the gallows and 
his innocent family from their involvement in the 
hideous tragedy, the law took its course, and he 
was hanged on the last Friday of August, 1850. 
What horror and misery might have been averted 
(I used to think) if Dr. George Parkman had faced 
his debtor with something of the conciliatory 
meekness with which he approached the youth 
clothed in the brief authority of an editor's chair ! 

VII 

The authority was even briefer than the wearer 
of it had reason to expect. The Yankee Na- 
tion made so good a start, and kept so prosper- 
ously afloat for five or six months, that Mr. Isaac 
Crooker, of Hotchkiss & Co., who had been its 
business manager from the outset, determined to 
devote to it his entire attention, and withdrew from 
that firm for the purpose. He took the paper as 
his share of the firm's assets, and bought out the 
third partner, thus assuming all interests except 
my own. He was a genial fellow worker, and our 
mutual relations were always as pleasant as pos- 
sible ; my satisfaction in the new arrangement 
having but one serious drawback, Mr. Crooker's 
uncertain health. He had a consumptive ten- 



156 MY OWN STORY 

dency, which after another half year or so became 
so pronounced that his physician ordered him to 
leave all business cares behind and seek a more 
congenial climate. With my consent he turned 
over his two-thirds interest to another publisher, 
whose main object in acquiring it was, as it proved, 
to give employment to a relative, a retired minis- 
ter, by placing him in the editorial chair. As 
there had been a tacit understanding that I was to 
keep the position, this was an unpleasant surprise 
to me. I had become accustomed to the routine 
work, and liked it, and was looking forward to an 
early sharing of profits, which had been hitherto 
absorbed in the expenses attending the establish- 
ment of a new publication. But as I held only a 
minority of the stock, I submitted to the inevit- 
able (I could always do that with a stout heart 
and a smiling countenance), and walked out of the 
office with my few personal belongings under my 
arm, cheerfully giving place to my grave and rev- 
erend successor. As the chief merit of the paper 
— if it had any merit at all — was the vivacity 
the abounding good spirits of its youthful editor 
infused into it, and as that quality quickly evapo- 
rated under the clerical control, it failed to please 
its old patrons, or to attract new ones ; like poor 
Crooker, it fell into a decline, and hardly survived 
him, lingering a few months longer, and then dis- 
appearing from the world's eye. 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 157 

I had been but a very short time out of the edi- 
torial office when my friend Ben : Perley Poore 
(he always punctuated his praenomen with a colon) 
accosted me one day on the street in this wise : — 

" You are just the man I am looking for ! The 
Fair opens to-day " (it was one of Boston's early 
industrial expositions), " and I am starting a little 
sheet, The Mirror of the Fair, that I want you to 
take charge of." 

"'Angels and ministers of grace'!" I ex- 
claimed. " I know nothing about the Fair, or 
anything in it." 

" Go in and see it," he replied, "and in fifteen 
minutes you will know as much about it as any- 
body. Write two or three short articles a day on 
any subject suggested ; then brief comments, five 
or ten line paragraphs, about the most curious or 
interesting things you find ; having our advertisers 
in mind, first and always." 

This was the substance of his instructions, and 
after taking me into the Fair and introducing me 
to the management, he left me, as he said, "to 
work out my own salvation." I seem to have 
worked it out satisfactorily, for with the exception 
of the advertising columns, I wrote almost the 
entire contents of the little daily Mirror of the 
Fair as long as there was any Fair to mirror. 

Poore was at that time publishing his American 



158 MY OWN STORY 

Sentinel, and at the close of the Fair he offered 
me a position on that paper, which I was not slow 
to accept. I wrote for it sketches and editorials, 
and assisted him in the office, taking entire edi- 
torial charge of the paper in his frequent absences. 
It was during his absence in Washington, early in 
185 1, that a poor little innocent article of mine, 
touching satirically upon our Northern zeal in 
slave-catching and Southern threats of secession 
(burning questions then), lost it many subscribers, 
and, I fear, hastened its demise. 

This was my last experience as an editor in 
those years, but not quite my last opportunity. 
Some time after the Sentinel incident I was called 
upon by the proprietor of a Boston daily, who 
made the astonishing proposal that I should be- 
come its editor-in-chief. Astonishing, indeed, for 
I had had no training in journalistic work of the 
kind that would be required of me. I did not be- 
lieve myself fitted for it, and wondered that any- 
body should have conceived such an idea of my 
capabilities. I regarded even my connection with 
the weekly press as something merely temporary, 
all my aspirations being toward some more dis- 
tinctively literary occupation. The salary offered 
(twice what I could hope to earn by my pen) was, 
I confess, a staggering temptation, as I sat for a 
moment gazing into the face of my visitor, almost 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 159 

doubting his sanity; but I put it promptly and 

resolutely behind me. I might have pleaded my 

youth, my natural indolence, my self-distrust ; 

above all, my insufficient knowledge of men and 

events. I merely said, "I could never do the 

necessary night work ; my eyes would not permit 

it." This was my ostensible reason for declining 

the position; but, behind that, an inner Voice, 

irrespective of all reasons, shaped an irrevocable 

No. 

In fact, I engaged in no other editorial work of 

any kind until Our Young Folks was started in 

1865. 

VIII 

Some interesting events marked the history of 
Boston in those early years. I had been but a few 
weeks in the city when, October 25, 1848, the 
Cochituate water was introduced. There was a 
grand procession through the streets, then a cele- 
bration on the slopes of the Common overlooking 
the Frog Pond. An ode, written for the occasion 
by a brilliant young poet of Cambridge, James 
Russell Lowell, was sung by an immense choir of 
school children, and there were appropriate ad- 
dresses, setting forth the benefits of the new water 
supply, which was to replace the antiquated wells 
and cisterns, and meet the needs of the growing 
city for an indefinite future, — the next millen- 



160 MY OWN STORY 

nium, some predicted. After so much impressive 
preparation, Mayor Quincy smilingly asked if it 
was the people's will that the water should be 
brought in. A multitudinous, jubilant shout went 
up, as if it had been meant to reach the moon. 
The mayor's hand waved, cannon thundered, all 
the bells of the city clanged. As if roused by 
the summons, a lion-like head of tawny-maned 
water pushed up through the fountain's collar, 
seemed to hesitate a moment at the amazing spec- 
tacle of human faces, then reared and towered, in 
a mighty column eighty feet in height, and shook 
out its tumbling yellow locks in the sunset glow. 
The flow, turbid at first, gradually cleared, chan- 
ging from dull gold to glittering silver, and the 
great concourse of citizens broke up, with counte- 
nances illumined as if shone upon by a miracle : 
even the prophets of evil, the doubters and fault- 
finders of the day, hardly foreseeing in how few 
years Boston would be clamoring for a more abun- 
dant water supply ! 

As I look back now, I cannot help wondering 
how many of those citizens yet live and recall the 
wild enthusiasm of the hour. Where are the 
happy school children who sang ? Who of them 
survive, old men and women now, to tell the tale ? 
Boston has • since had another Mayor Quincy, 
grandson of him whose upraised hand set the guns 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 161 

and bells dinning and the water spouting. The 
chief water commissioner was Nathan Hale, one 
of Boston's foremost citizens ; since when, a son 
of his, then an obscure young country minister, 
has shaped for himself a long and useful and dis- 
tinguished career. The Cambridge poet, writer of 
the not over-successful ode (too long and too full 
of subtle and even learned allusion for the occa- 
sion, with some unsingable lines), has more than 
fulfilled the promise of his prime, and passed on, 
leaving a name high among the illustrious of the 
age. 

The new fountain, in its varied forms, became 
the Common's chief attraction, adding the one 
needed charm of soaring and plashing water to 
that green pleasure ground. The surrounding 
slopes and malls were long my daily and nightly 
haunt. There I found solace for my continued 
exile from the country, and, especially on summer 
evenings, indulged my love of lonely reverie. 

IX 

In the last weeks of September, 1850, came 
Jenny Lind. The avant-courier of tempestuous 
excitement attending her visit made itself felt at 
the auction sale of seats that took place two or 
three days before the first concert. That morning 
I met on the street an acquaintance, who told me 



i62 MY OWN STORY 

he was going to attend the sale " just out of curi- 
osity," and asked me to accompany him. I like- 
wise had some curiosity to gratify j the auction 
sale of seats for the Swedish Nightingale's first 
concert in New York having produced, on a 
smaller scale, as lively a sensation as her singing. 
The first choice of seats for that first night had 
brought, over and above the regular price of tick- 
ets, two hundred and twenty-five dollars ; the 
purchaser being neither a musical enthusiast nor 
a millionaire, but a man of business, Genin, the 
hatter. He had been shrewd enough to foresee 
the value of such an advertisement, which, Bar- 
num tells us in his autobiography, "laid the foun- 
dation of his fortune," Genin hats, already in 
fashion, soon becoming the vogue in all the great 
Eastern cities. 

Tremont Temple, in which the auction was 
held, was filling rapidly as we entered ; a remark- 
able gathering of business men, newspaper men, 
speculators, musicians, persons of leisure of all 
sorts. 

The bids for the first ticket began high, — $50 
or $75, — and they were running up in quick 
jumps, when my companion said to me, " Hold 
my hat, Trowmridge ! " (he had a way of talking 
through his nose), stepped up on the seat beside 
me, and put in a bid that distanced all the rest, — 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 163 

" Two hundred and twenty-five dollars ! " He 
had begun where Genin left off. 

After that the bids mounted by fifty and twenty- 
five dollar leaps, the owner of the hat I held lead- 
ing all competitors : " Four hundred — four hun- 
dred and fifty — five hundred — five hundred 
twenty-five " — to my utter amazement. I pulled 
his coat-tail, whispering hoarsely, " You 're crazy ! 
you 're crazy, man! " but he gave no heed to any 
other voice crying in that wilderness than those 
of the auctioneer and of the one rival bidder who 
followed him beyond the five hundred mark. 

" Six hundred ! " That, after some hesitation, 
was the competitor's last call. 

" Six hnndred and twenty-five dollars ! " the 
owner of the hat responded instantly, and stood 
calmly erect and expectant, until the first choice 
was knocked down to him at that price, amid up- 
roarious applause. Then he smilingly reached 
down for his hat, waved it, bowing to the specta- 
tors as they continued to cheer him, and resumed 
his seat. The next choice brought a premium of 
only $20, and the climax of excitement was over. 

" You thought I was crazy ! " said the purchaser 
of the first ticket, as we walked away from the 
Temple together. " What 's your opinion now ? " 

I had had time to think it over, and I admitted 
that, if the first Jenny Lind ticket in New York 



i6 4 MY OWN STORY 

was worth $225 to an advertising hatter, the first 
Boston ticket might be worth $625 to a man of 
his profession. 

The purchaser of this ticket was Ossian E. 
Dodge, a singer of comic songs and a giver of en- 
tertainments in which he was the sole performer. 
His comic power consisted largely in grotesque 
grimaces, and the feats of a voice that could go 
down and down into the very sepulchres and cata- 
combs of basso profundo, until the hearer won- 
dered in what ventriloquial caverns it would lose 
itself and become a ghost of sound. He called 
himself a song-writer as well as a singer, and some 
of the published songs of the day bore the unve- 
racious inscription, " Words and music by Ossian 
E. Dodge." I wrote the words of one of these, 
and somebody else composed the music ; and I 
had reason to believe that all the songs he claimed 
as his own were produced in this vicarious man- 
ner. I may add that they were probably paid for 
in the same coin he dealt out to me, namely, the 
" ninepences " and " fourpences " of New England 
(the shillings and sixpences of New York and 
other States), which were the current small 
change of those days. These were taken in at 
the doors of his concerts, the usual price of ad- 
mission to which (before Jenny Lind's advent) 
was ninepence, or twelve-and-a-half cents. Two 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 165 

ninepences, or four fourpences, were, nominally, 
worth a quarter of a dollar ; but as they were sub- 
ject to the shrinkage of the fractional one-half or 
one-quarter cent, when paid out singly, nobody 
liked to receive them in any quantities, and the 
banks would take them only at a discount. Dodge, 
however, insisted on paying his small debts with 
them ; a practice which I recalled when, in writ- 
ing Martin Merrivale, I described Killings, in 
his dealings with the hero, opening a leather 
pouch, counting out forty smooth-worn fourpences, 
and tendering them to Martin on the crown of his 
hat. Killings, I here confess, was frankly in- 
tended as a portrait of Dodge, whose charlatan- 
ism and love of notoriety I then believed (I am 
not quite so sure now) made him legitimate game 
for my satire, after some unfairness in his treat- 
ment of me had caused a rupture between us. 

The sensational purchase of the $625 ticket 
conjoined Dodge's name with those of Jenny Lind 
and her famous manager, in temporary publicity ; 
and he lost no time in taking advantage of such 
advertising. Very soon was issued a well-exe- 
cuted lithograph representing P. T. Barnum, solid, 
bland, and benignant, in the act of introducing 
Mr. Ossian E. Dodge, smiling and elegant, to 
Jenny Lind, adorably gowned, and graciously 
bending, with her eyes modestly downcast at the 



166 MY OWN STORY 

high-lights on Ossian's boots. This picture, ap- 
propriately framed, was exhibited in shop windows 
all over the city and in the suburbs, and it pre- 
ceded the comic singer wherever his concerts 
were announced. He had never drawn large 
audiences in Boston ; but his first concert there, 
after the Jenny Lind episode, filled Tremont 
Temple to its utmost capacity, at quadruple the 
old rates of admission, and reimbursed him in a 
single night for the cost of the ticket. 



Jenny Lind, if I remember rightly, gave four 
concerts in Tremont Temple, in which high prices 
for seats were maintained ($3 to $7, plus what- 
ever premium they would command), and after- 
wards two concerts, at what were called popular 
prices, in the immense new hall over the then 
recently constructed Fitchburg Railroad station. 
I heard her at one of the Tremont Temple 
concerts, and again at the first Fitchburg Hall 
concert, where a disastrous panic was so narrowly 
averted. 

Anticipating a rush on the last occasion, and 
having invited a lady friend to accompany me, I 
took the precaution of going early to the hall that 
memorable evening, and succeeded in getting good 
seats on the right hand side (how well I remem- 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON ,67 

ber the exact position !) about halfway back from 
the stage. Soon the uproar began. The seats 
were not numbered, and the auditorium would ac- 
commodate only about four thousand people, while 
by some oversight five thousand tickets had been 
sold. As the throngs came pouring in, the crowd- 
ing for places, the eddying and recoiling and voci- 
ferating, became frightful ; and a double danger 
threatened, that of the floor giving way under the 
enormous weight imposed upon it, and of the mul- 
titude destroying itself in its own terror and frenzy. 
Even after the disappointed hundreds who could 
not get in had been turned away, and the time 
had passed for the opening of the concert, the 
tumult continued. My companion was frightened, 
and entreated me to take her out ; and I became 
excited in trying to quell the excitement of others. 
The orchestra struck up, but its strains were 
drowned in the general disturbance. Somebody 
tried to address the audience, half of whom were 
on their feet, while everybody seemed to be cry- 
ing, " Down ! down ! " those who were up calling 
as loudly as those who were already down. Some 
pulled down those who were standing before 
them, to be in turn pulled down by those behind. 
Then on the stage a radiant figure appeared, 
serene, but with bosom visibly heaving; and a 
voice of uttermost simple purity glided forth like 



168 MY OWN STORY 

an angel of light on the stormy waters, stilling 
them into instant calm. 

XI 

I had not been long in Boston when Theodore 
Parker's growing fame — or infamy, as some good 
haters of his heresies preferred to call it — at- 
tracted me on Sunday mornings to the Melodeon, 
where the small independent society over which 
he had been lately installed held its meetings. 

The Melodeon — entered from Washington 
Street just below the site of the present Boston 
Theatre — was a popular concert and exhibition 
hall, where the very beatings of the pulse of New 
England reforms could be felt and measured. 
There, notably, the old time anti-slavery conven- 
tions hammered away at that amazing futility, 
abolitionism, abhorred and derided, but neverthe- 
less destined to prove the coulter of the terrible 
war-driven emancipation plough. There one could 
listen to the uncompromising Garrison, whose aim 
was solely to convince, and not to charm ; to the 
eloquent Phillips, who charmed even when he did 
not convince ; to the brothers Burleigh, one of 
whom favored a fancied resemblance to the pic- 
tures of Christ, by parting his hair in the middle 
and letting it fall on his shoulders in wavy folds ; 
to Frederick Douglass, a natural orator, whose 




THEODORE PARKER 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 169 

own rise from slavery was the most powerful of 
all arguments for the cause he advocated ; to Pills- 
bury, Foster, and others noted or notorious in 
their day, women as well as men, their names now 
remembered only in connection with that agita- 
tion. Parker was one of the leaders in it ; his 
exceptional ability and position as a preacher gave 
him more than a local reputation, and carried the 
odium of his name as far as those of Phillips and 
Garrison were known and hated. How he was 
regarded in South Carolina was illustrated by an 
experience a Boston merchant once had at Charles- 
ton. An excited crowd gathering around the 
hotel register where he had written his name 
observed him with suspicious whisperings and 
threatening looks, which became alarming ; when 
the excited landlord stepped up to him and said 
anxiously : " Your name is Parker ? " " That is my 
name, sir." "Theodore Parker, of Boston? the 
abolitionist ? " " Oh no, no, sir ! I am Theodore 
D. Parker, a very different man ! " The landlord 
breathed a sigh of relief. " I am mighty glad to 
hear it ! " he said. " And allow me to give you 
a bit of wholesome advice. When you are regis- 
tering your name in Southern hotels, write the 
*D ' damned plain ! " 

Parker occasionally spoke at antislavery meet- 
ings, but he was at his best when he had the 



170 MY OWN STORY 

Melodeon platform to himself, with his own pecu- 
liar audience before him. There every Sunday 
morning his sturdy figure could be seen standing 
behind his secular-looking desk ; no orator, rarely 
using a gesture, entirely free from the conven- 
tional pulpit tone and mannerism; reading his 
hour-long discourse (lecture rather than sermon) 
with a grinding earnestness well suiting his direct 
appeals to the reason and conscience of his audi- 
tors. The reading might at times have seemed 
monotonous but for the refreshing modernness of 
his topics, and the illustrative wit and fact and 
logic that illuminated them. 

I was at first repelled by the occasional merci- 
lessness of his judgments and the force of his 
invective ; for he could out-Garrison Garrison in 
his denunciations of slaveholding and its politi- 
cal and clerical supporters ; and even while he 
voiced my own early convictions regarding the 
theological dogmas in the gloom of which I had 
been reared, I was often made to wince by the 
harshness of metaphor he applied to them. 

I seem to have got well over this sensitiveness 
by the time his congregation, having outgrown the 
limits of the Melodeon, removed to the then new 
Music Hall, in the autumn of 1852; for upon that 
event I addressed to him a sonnet that opened 
with these lines : — 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 171 

Parker ! who wields a mighty moral sledge 
With his strong arm of intellect ; who shakes 
The dungeon-walls of error ; grinds and breaks 

Its chains on reason's adamantine ledge ; 

and ended with — 

That champion of the right, whose fearless deeds 
Proclaim him faithful to the sacred trust ; 

Truth, crushed, entombed, but newly risen, needs 
To cleanse her temples of sepulchral dust, 
Yea, to hurl down that thing of rot and rust, 

That skeleton in mail, Religion cased in creeds ! 

I saw no harshness of metaphor in this, nor in- 
deed any fault except that the last line was an 
alexandrine. But the editor of Boston's favorite 
evening paper (of whom I shall have more to say- 
later), to whom I offered it, handed it back to me 
with the remark : " I suppose you are aware that 
these sentiments are contrary to those entertained 
by nine out of ten of our readers ?" — instancing 
Parker's offensive radicalism in politics and reli- 
gion. I said I was pleased to know that that was 
his reason for not printing the lines. " It is a very 
good editorial reason," he replied ; and we parted 
amicably. 

In response to my mother's frequently ex- 
pressed wish that I should " write more poetry " 
and go oftener to meeting, I informed her in a 
letter about this time that I occasionally wrote 
verses, and that I went frequently to hear Rev. 



1 72 MY OWN STORY 

Theodore Parker, — writing the "Rev." (as the 
Charleston landlord would have said) quite plain. 
I did not send her the sonnet ; and I left her to 
learn from a good uncle of mine that " if Theo- 
dore Parker was n't doing as much harm in the 
world as the devil, it was because he was n't so 
smart as the devil ; but that he was doing as much 
harm as he knew how." She believed in her boy, 
however, and I had little trouble in convincing 
her that with all his faults Parker was a great 
and brave and conscientious man. 

I did not get my sonnet printed, but I meant 
that it should have at least one interested reader, 
and accordingly sent a copy of it to Parker him- 
self. It called out from him a kindly appreciative 
letter, and brought me the honor of his acquaint- 
ance. This ought to have proved a very great 
advantage to me ; for he invited me to come and 
see him, showed me his collection of rare books in 
the different languages of which he was master, 
and proffered me the free use of them, either to 
examine there in his library, or to carry away 
and read at my leisure. " Come in at any time," 
he said, "and help yourself; don't be afraid of 
intruding upon me. I shall be glad to see you, if 
I am here ; and to talk with you, unless I happen 
to have a pressing task in hand." He encouraged 
me to talk about my early life and my reasons for 



EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 173 

leaving home ; and used me as an illustration of a 
point in his next Sunday's discourse, quoting my 
very words, when he alluded to the country-bred 
youth who comes to the city "because he aspires 
to something better than working on a farm at 
twelve dollars a month ; " to me a curious exem- 
plification of his habit of making every rill of ex- 
perience tributary to that omnivorous stream, his 
weekly sermon. 

His generous offer of his library appears to me 
now as surprising as my failure to make use of it 
was unaccountable. In thanking him for the 
enviable privilege, I felt sure that I should return 
in a day or two and enjoy it. Then the thought 
of finding him at his desk, writing his next Sun- 
day's homily, decided me to wait until Monday ; 
then for some reason I postponed the visit another 
week ; then — then — in short, I did not go at all ! 
He never repeated the invitation, and I let so long 
a time elapse that I was at length ashamed to re- 
mind him of it. Thus the perverse imp of diffi- 
dence and irresolution held me back from many 
advantages in life, which I had but to face with 
simple faith and courage, lay hold of, and possess. 
I recall with shame another instance of my un- 
fortunate faint-heartedness in those days. When 
I most needed such a friend and adviser, I had 
the good fortune to meet Mrs. Stowe, then in the 



174 MY OWN STORY 

dazzling dawn of her success and fame. She 
treated me with exceeding kindness, complimented 
something I had written, and invited me to visit 
her in Andover, adding, " I want you to make our 
house one of your homes." I remember well the 
words and the winning smite with which they were 
spoken. Of course I promised to go, and of course 
I never went. Long afterwards I reminded her 
of that gracious invitation, and of my seemingly 
ungracious treatment of it. " Foolish boy ! " she 
said; "why didn't you come?" Foolish boy 
indeed ! 

The discourses of Parker were a moral and in- 
tellectual stimulus, and well I recall the tremen- 
dous temporary effect of some of them, — like his 
sermon on Daniel Webster ; — but they never en- 
tered very deeply into my life. Extreme radical 
as he was in his religious and reformatory opin- 
ions, the great body of modern thought has come 
so nearly abreast with him, even passing in some 
directions beyond him, that he appears a moderate 
conservative to those who read his writings to-day. 
Perhaps his influence over me would have been 
stronger if it had not been early eclipsed by that 
of his great contemporary, Emerson. 




HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 



CHAPTER V 

FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 



I boarded at No. 33 Brattle Street a little over 
a year, then moved to more attractive and commo- 
dious quarters at the corner (southeast) of Beach 
Street and Harrison Avenue. There I had a well- 
furnished front chamber, where, on Sunday after- 
noons, I welcomed a few friends, who soon began 
bringing their friends, so that before long I had 
about me a set of lively companions, all older than 
myself, and two or three near twice my age. 
There were two retired army officers who had 
served in the Mexican war, three or four writers 
for the press, a sailor who had had as many adven- 
tures as Sindbad, and others of varied experiences. 
I greatly enjoyed their good fellowship ; and it 
was solely for the sake of hospitality that I began 
to keep cigars and a decanter on my table. Before 
long I found myself mixing a glass when I sat 
down to write, and sipping it between paragraphs. 
I think it was some indiscretion on the part of my 
guests, one or two of whom could n't withstand 
temptation, that awakened in me a consciousness 



176 MY OWN STORY 

that I was forming an evil habit and encouraging 
it in others. That consciousness had only slum- 
bered all along ; and when it was finally roused, 
resolution to change my way of life was roused 
with it. Accordingly, after I had been about a 
year in my Beach Street quarters, I engaged rooms 
in a small and very quiet place leading off Tre- 
mont Street, not far above the Common. I took 
care not to be found at home for three or four 
Sunday afternoons after my removal, and thus 
managed to sift out, from those whose friendship 
I wished to retain, my less desirable associates. 

From that time forth I never took any sort of 
stimulant to facilitate composition. Stimulants 
used for that purpose are like stones let fall into 
a fountain to create an overflow. The immediate 
effect may be to raise the water, but at the best 
they merely forestall the supply, and, even if they 
do not render it turbid, they often choke it at the 
source while appearing temporarily to increase it. 

Tobacco, in the form of cigarettes and cigars, I 
had used with moderation ever since I came to 
Boston ; but as I was now becoming intimate in a 
small circle where even the taint of it in clothing 
was unwelcome, I soon gave up smoking altogether. 
I have always rejoiced at a resolution that rid me 
so early of a habit which might otherwise have be- 
come inveterate. 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 177 

I roomed with a private family and got my 
meals at boarding-places near by ; for one while at 
a home of vegetarian reformers, where I lived for 
an entire year without tasting animal food or miss- 
ing it ; and later at a French table d'hote, where 
I went back to French conversation and French 
cookery. In that retired apartment (No. 1 Seaver 
Place, to be exact), with the exception of summers 
spent at the mountains or elsewhere, or in travel, 
and ten months in Europe, I passed the next eight 
years of my life. 

II 

In the summer of 185 1 I indulged myself in a 
delightful trip, around by Lake Champlain, the St. 
Lawrence, and Lake Ontario, to Western New 
York ; spending a week or two at Niagara Falls 
and Lockport, and for the first time in over four 
years revisiting my mother and brothers in the old 
homestead. There was much joy and some heart- 
ache in seeing again the well-known Ogden faces, 
in living over in memory the sports and hopes 
and irksome tasks of my boyhood, and in breaking 
open the golden-globed peaches, as I lay on the 
same old orchard turf, in the warm September 
weather. 

Returning to Boston and my new quarters in 
Seaver Place, early in the autumn, I resumed my 



178 MY OWN STORY 

sketch-writing, and gave what time I could spare 
from it to something which I hoped would prove 
a work of more lasting importance. 

It had long been my ambition to publish a book, 
and I now set about writing a novel, to which I 
gave my spare hours all the rest of that autumn 
and the following winter. 

The story chiefly concerned two Boston families, 
one recently risen to wealth and social pretension, 
the other aristocratic and decayed, whose relations 
with each other gave scope for some good dialogue 
and delineation of character. The early chapters 
were, as I remember, lively enough ; but I had 
started out impulsively, without any well-defined 
plan, and, what was worse, without any interior 
knowledge of the kind of life I was attempting to 
describe. I found it impossible to work my situa- 
tions up to a climax ; I lost my interest in the 
task, and held myself to it by mere force of will, 
bringing it to a premature conclusion, while it was 
never, in fact, properly finished. I still had hope 
that entertainment enough would be found in the 
story to redeem it from utter failure : but, after it 
had been successively declined by two or three 
publishers, I began to take their view of it, which 
confirmed my own private judgment, and smiled 
in a sickly sort of way when one of my friends, 
who had borrowed it to read, declared, on returning 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 179 

it, that the opening chapters were as good as those 
of Vanity Fair. When I asked about the con- 
cluding chapters, he said he " did n't get so far 
as those." I fear nobody ever did. He was sure 
he could find a publisher for it, if I would let him ; 
but I had by that time made up my mind that it 
should never again be offered for publication, un- 
less I could first find courage to rewrite the latter 
half. That courage never came. 

Ill 

One of the Boston weeklies I wrote for in the 
early fifties was The Carpet Bag, to which I was 
attracted less by any pecuniary advantage it offered 
than by my very great liking for the man who gave 
it whatever character and reputation it enjoyed. 
This was Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, who had 
begun life as a compositor, and while setting type 
in the office of The Boston Post had commenced 
printing in that paper his quaint sayings of "Mrs. 
Partington," so widely popular in their day, and 
now so nearly forgotten. He had a large, genial 
nature, something like Walt Whitman's, but with- 
out Whitman's courage and immense personal 
force, and with nothing of his genius ; although 
Shillaber, too, was a poet in his way, writing with 
great facility a racy, semi-humorous verse, speci- 
mens of which he collected in a volume, Rhymes 



180 MY OWN STORY 

with Reason and Without, in 1853. He also pub- 
lished The Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington, 
with the proceeds of which he purchased a home 
in Chelsea, unfortunately in a quarter where real 
estate was destined to decline in value. Our ac- 
quaintance began in 1850, and ripened quickly 
into a friendship that continued as long as he lived, 
notwithstanding a divergence in our political 
opinions, — a divergence that became very wide 
indeed when men of the North had to choose be- 
tween a Union dominated by slavery and resistance 
to that domination. Even at the time of Lincoln's 
second election there was a modicum of truth in 
what I said to him jocularly, that I believed he 
would vote for Jeff Davis if Jeff Davis had the 
regular Democratic nomination, indorsed by The 
Boston Post. 

Shillaber's physical proportions, his wit and 
humor and amiable social qualities, made him for 
many years a notable figure in Boston. I believe 
it can be said of him more truly than of any other 
man I ever knew — except perhaps one I shall 
have much to say of farther on — that he never 
made an enemy. During all the latter part of his 
life he suffered greatly from inherited disease, the 
gout ; but neither persistent pain nor enforced 
retirement and inactivity could ever cloud that 
cheerful, optimistic nature. 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS t 8i 

IV 

Working at the printer's case in The Carpet Bag 
office, where I first saw him, was a sandy-haired, 
thin-featured youth, with a long nose and pale com- 
plexion, known as Charley Browne. He had been 
brought to Boston, from Maine, in 185 1, by his 
uncle, Dr. Calvin Farrar, who was getting a pam- 
phlet printed, to advertise a water-cure establish- 
ment he had at Waterford, and who offered the 
job to the printers of The Carpet Bag, provided 
they would take the boy with it. They took the 
job and the boy (then aged seventeen), who before 
he was much older began to write mildly funny 
things for the paper over the signature, " Lieuten- 
ant Chubb." He probably chose the pseudonym 
Chubb for the reason that he himself was lank ; 
just as he may have claimed to have learned his 
trade in the office of The Skowhegan Clarion, be- 
cause of the oddity of the name, whereas he had 
really come from another town in Maine, and from 
the office of a paper less grotesquely labeled. His 
serious countenance veiled a spirit of original and 
audacious waggery ; and he was even then known 
to be capable of the same conscientious painstaking 
in the accomplishment of a solemn act of drollery 
as when, a few years after, while on a lecturing 
tour in midwinter, occupying with a friend a room 



182 MY OWN STORY 

of arctic temperature, he got out of bed in the 
middle of the night to hang before a wind-shaken 
sash a " skeleton " hoopskirt he had found in a 
closet, remarking shiveringly, " It will keep out 
the c-o-oarsest of the c-o-old ! " From Boston he 
went to Cleveland, where Charley Brown of The 
Carpet Bag became Charles F. Browne of the 
Plaindealer, and Lieutenant Chubb developed 
into Artemus Ward. 



It was in The Carpet Bag office that I first met 
that brilliant young Irishman, Charles Graham 
Halpine, who had graduated from Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, at seventeen, become a journalist 
and an adventurer soon after, and was Barnum's 
private secretary when that enterprising showman 
brought Jenny Lind to Boston in the autumn of 
1850. He had come to The Carpet Bag office 
to see about some Jenny Lind advertising, when 
he announced his intention of quitting Barnum 
(" B-b-barnum," he called him, for he had an 
engaging hitch in his speech) and of settling 
down in Boston, — as he did, upon the showman's 
departure. He took an office in Tremont Row 
and immediately began earning a good income by 
writing advertisements in prose and rhyme, and 
poems and paragraphs for the press. He was 




CHARLES F. BROWN (ARTEMUS WARD) 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 183 

a little above the medium stature, with a florid 
complexion, superabundant animal spirits, and 
a maturity of mind and manner astonishingly 
beyond his years, then barely twenty-one. 

He quickly got the run of our politics, be- 
came a Democrat (as I believe Irish-Americans 
mostly do, there being in the name something 
alluring to haters of monarchy), and gained a local 
reputation as a wit and satirist in the columns of 
The Boston Post, then in its golden prime under the 
direction of its founder, Charles Gordon Greene. 
Like Charles Lamb, Halpine sometimes made his 
stammer tributary to his wit, as when, upon Mrs. 
Stowe's going abroad in 1853, on a supposed 
mission to collect funds for the anti-slavery cause, 
he nicknamed her, first among his friends and 
afterward in print, " Harriet BeseecherBe Stowe." 

He conceived an ardent attachment for Shilla- 
ber, with whom he associated himself in the man- 
agement of The Carpet Bag. He and I had our 
individual literary enthusiasms, which struck out 
sparks of mutual personal interest at our first in- 
terview ; with us acquaintance and intimacy might 
almost be said to have been twin-born. We both 
had good memories for the things we liked, and 
vividly I recall the happy evening hours we spent, 
walking up and down the slopes of the Common, 
or seated on a bench by the fountain, reciting to 



i8 4 MY OWN STORY 

each other passages from our favorite poets. It 
was he who thus introduced me to Macaulay's 
Lays of Ancient Rome, delivering parts or the 
whole of more than one (I remember especially 
Horatius) in a measured, solemn chant that lapped 
me in the elysium of a new sensation. I in turn 
repeated, among other things, Poe's Sleeper, — 
the most strikingly beautiful of all the produc- 
tions of that aberrant genius, — and stanzas from 
Mrs. Browning's Vision of Poets, which I at that 
time prodigiously admired, but find almost un- 
readably diffuse and faulty of form to-day. Over 
all the intervening years I hear again his sharp 
exclamation of rapturous astonishment at the 
lines, — 

" And visionary Coleridge, who 
Did sweep his thoughts, as angels do 
Their wings, with cadence up the blue." 

Halpine's Lyrics by the Letter H. was a little 
volume so bright with promise that the writer 
seemed surely destined to poetic eminence. 1 Un- 
happily his restless energy and exuberant fancy 
were unaccompanied by those other gifts of genius, 
patient persistence and the capacity for taking 

1 Published in 1854. Among the seventy or more lyrics was 
one, The Ruby, addressed to me, in " acknowledgment of a ring 
received from " — and so forth, on some occasion which I have 
entirely forgotten. 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 185 

pains. What Byron said of himself was more 
literally true of Halpine, — he must capture his 
prey at a pounce or miss it altogether; but he 
lacked Byron's power of holding on after a fortu- 
nate seizure. He rarely returned to a poem after 
the first inspiration had cooled, and it generally 
went into the waste-basket if once left unfinished 
or needing much revision. He had amazing speed 
in short heats. 

An unrestrained and sometimes misguided im- 
petuosity affected his conduct as it marred his art, 
and it led to a catastrophe that was almost a tra- 
gedy. A divergence of our aims in life had been 
the cause of our gradually drawing asunder, after 
about two years of pretty close intimacy, but I 
was still on friendly terms with him when he came 
to me one day to ask my aid in an affair, the an- 
nouncement of which filled me with incredulous 
astonishment. It was nothing less than a duel. 

Halpine was a reckless critic, and after he be- 
became connected with The Carpet Bag (in 1852) 
he began to print in that sheet articles of the 
old-fashioned slashing sort of which Shillaber 
could hardly have approved. He delighted espe- 
cially in worrying with his wit a young poet named 
Handiboe, who came, I believe, from one of the 
Southern States, — who, at any rate, cherished a 
Southern sense of so-called honor and a prejudice 



186 MY OWN STORY 

against personal abuse. Stung to rage, Handiboe 
sent him a solemn challenge by the hand of a 
friend, who had likewise lived in the South and 
was familiar with the " code." 

This challenge Halpine brought to me, with the 
astounding request that I should serve as his sec- 
ond ; he was quite in earnest, declaring his inten- 
tion to give Handiboe, whom he confessed to hav- 
ing injured, " satisfaction." I consented to act as 
his friend, if he would authorize me to go to the 
other party and explain that the offensive article 
was written more for sport than from any mali- 
cious intent, that he regretted the injury, and that, 
at all events, a duel in New England was impos- 
sible. But Halpine would not consider such a 
course. He said : " We can go to Canada and 
have it out there. If you will not be my second, 
somebody else will." Finding it impossible, either 
by remonstrance or ridicule, to alter his deter- 
mination, I accepted the responsibility, solely in 
order to prevent the duel from coming off. 

Handiboe' s second was a journalist and play- 
wright, a social Bohemian (though we had n't that 
name for the species in those days), by name 
Ned Wilkins, known to me only by reputation up 
to that time. He called upon me with due for- 
mality, and I was pleased to find that he took 
the same view of the matter that I did. He had 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 187 

once been engaged in an affair of honor in New- 
Orleans, and he explained to me how the seconds, 
of whom he was one, had made bullets of bread- 
crumbs coated with tin-foil, loaded the pistols in 
the presence of their principals and allowed them 
to fire that harmless ammunition at each other 
at ten paces until their honor was satisfied. He 
said : " We will take a trip to Niagara Falls and 
maybe have an interesting time." I was young 
and adventurous enough to agree to the trip and 
the ruse of the bread-crumb bullets. 

How our two principals would have demeaned 
themselves if they had thus been brought face to 
face, weapons in hand, can only be conjectured; 
for the affair, even while our plans were pending, 
was precipitated to a most unlooked-for, calami- 
tous conclusion, the circumstances of which, al- 
though I was deeply concerned in it, cannot be 
related here. Halpine went soon after to New 
York, where he began at once a new and success- 
ful course in journalism and politics. 

Upon the breaking out of the Rebellion he be- 
came a war Democrat, entered the Sixty-ninth 
Regiment as lieutenant, and quickly rose to the 
rank of adjutant-general on the staff of General 
Hunter. He served with that officer in South 
Carolina; transferred to the staff of General-in- 
Chief Halleck, he had charge of that officer's 



188 MY OWN STORY 

military correspondence, and afterwards assisted 
Hancock and Can by in revising the army regula- 
tions. Meanwhile he wrote war songs that be- 
came popular with soldiers in the field (Sambo's 
Right to be Kilt being one of the most effective) 
and also contributed to the press the humorous 
Private Miles O'Reilly papers, which, together 
with the songs, were afterward collected in book 
form. Retiring from the army with the brevet 
rank of brigadier-general, he returned to New 
York, became a conspicuous figure in metropoli- 
tan politics, edited The Citizen, and held the lucra- 
tive office of register. His death was fortuitous 
and untimely. Suffering from an attack of neu- 
ralgia, he administered to himself — with charac- 
teristic rashness, I have sometimes thought — 
an overdose of chloroform, and thus terminated 
his own life in his thirty-ninth year. He had 
great talent, vigor of mind and body, and engaging 
social gifts ; and I have always felt that only the 
more commonplace qualities of patience and pru- 
dence were needed for the fulfillment of his early 

promise. 

VI 

In the autumn of 1853 there came to Boston a 
Connecticut girl of eighteen, with a portfolio of 
sketches in prose and verse by " Ellen Louise," 
which she was offering to editors in advance of their 




GEN. C. G. HALPINE AND B. P. SHILLABER 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 189 

appearance in a book. The poems were the dewy 
buds of a talent that was afterwards to find its 
fullest flowering in sonnets remarkable for their 
tender feeling and sustained melody ; while her 
conversational and other personal and social gifts 
were prophecies (could one have read them aright) 
of the unique sphere of influence she was to fill 
in Boston and London society during these later 
decades. Her graceful girlish contributions were, 
as I remember, readily taken by editors ; one of 
whom, — quite too readily, some of us thought, — 
while accepting her articles, got himself accepted 
by the writer, and Ellen Louise Chandler became 
Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton. 

VII 

Another apparition of young womanhood, that 
I remember as beaming transiently upon Boston 
in those years, was the Maine poetess who wrote 
under the pseudonym of " Florence Percy," and 
later under her own name, Elizabeth Akers, after 
her marriage with one of the most gifted of 
American sculptors. A well-known poem of hers, 
Rock me to Sleep, became the subject of a noto- 
rious contention, in which I was so much inter- 
ested, as a friend of the deeply injured author, 
that I give it a brief mention here. It had been 
some time published, and had already achieved a 



i 9 o MY OWN STORY 

phenomenal popularity, when a New Jersey den- 
tist and amateur rhymester, Dr. Ball, claimed the 
authorship. Being a person of ample means, he 
employed an advocate at a liberal fee (one thou- 
sand dollars, it was said at the time) to support 
his pretension in a pamphlet ; in which were 
given letters of reputable witnesses who remem- 
bered hearing him, the said Ball, read the poem 
from manuscript before ever it appeared in print 
under Florence Percy's name. The public was 
largely imposed upon by this special pleading, and 
William Cullen Bryant was misled into attributing 
the poem to the supposititious author in an edition 
of Bryant's Library of Poetry and Song. Un- 
fortunately for his case, Ball issued a volume of 
his own verse, of so contemptible a quality that 
the purloined Rock me to Sleep, which was in- 
cluded in it, with additional stanzas by Ball him- 
self, shone (as I wrote in a letter of remonstrance 
to Bryant) like a diamond in a dust heap ; whereas 
(as I went on to argue) any one examining Flor- 
ence Percy's poems would find among them many 
of equal and some of decidedly superior merit. 
Another friend of Mrs. Akers, who carried to 
Bryant my letter, enforced its representations in 
an effective personal appeal ; and in the next edi- 
tion of the Library, Rock me to Sleep appeared 
rightly credited. Mrs. Akers has continued to do 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 191 

excellent work in verse and prose ; while Ball is 
remembered only in connection with his piratical 
pretense. 

Was he then a freebooter by premeditation, and 
were his reputable witnesses base perjurers? It 
has always seemed to me probable that he had writ- 
ten something in a similar vein, that he had read 
the verses to undiscriminating friends, and that 
they afterwards confounded them with the poem 
in question ; perhaps aiding him in the self-delusion 
that his sentiments, if not his very lines, had been 
plagiarized. But, however innocently he began, 
he must have known what a bad business he was 
in before he had proceeded very far. Throughout 
the whole of it, Mrs. Akers, annoyed as she must 
have been by the charge of theft brought against 
her by the real thief, acted with commendable 
dignity and self-restraint. 

The incident is not without parallel in our 
literary annals. A certain Miss Peck claimed the 
authorship of William Allen Butler's Nothing to 
Wear, after that poem had become famous. It 
was another woman, a Mrs. or Miss Emerson 
(her very name is passing into kindly oblivion), 
who laid violent hands on Will Carleton's Betsy 
and I are Out, constituting it the leading poem 
of a volume of her own inferior verse. More re- 
cently an attempt has been made to deprive Ella 



i 9 2 MY OWN STORY 

Wheeler Wilcox of one of her popular lyrics. It 
is sometimes adduced as an argument against the 
actual authors in such cases that the copyright 
law is not invoked for their vindication. That law 
is but a precarious protection for anything that 
has originally appeared, without its express attes- 
tation, in the pages of a periodical ; as was the 
case with each of the poems in question. I once 
lost a valuable property in one of my duly copy- 
righted early volumes, the contents of which had 
been first printed as a serial story in a non-copy- 
righted newspaper. Nobody else claimed the 
credit of the authorship, but, because of the neg- 
lected technicality, I was for years robbed of the 
royalties of a continuously selling book. 

VIII 

Another Boston weekly to which I was a fre- 
quent contributor was The Yankee Blade, con- 
ducted by a man of culture and experience, Wil- 
liam Mathews, — afterwards Professor Mathews, 
of the University of Chicago, author of Oratory 
and Orators, and other popular works. He one 
day said to me, after reading a sketch I had handed 
him, "You ought to write a book." I replied 
that I should "like to find a publisher of the 
same opinion ; " which led to his taking me, a 
few days later, to the publishing house of Phillips, 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 193 

Sampson & Co., one of the largest and most enter- 
prising in Boston. 

I did not then enter the publishers' office for the 
first time. The stately and urbane head of the firm 
received us with the same distinguished courtesy 
with which he had bowed me from his presence, 
on handing back the manuscript of my unfortu- 
nate novel, that I had submitted to him some 
months before. He did not seem to recall the 
circumstance, and I was grateful to him for greet- 
ing me as if he then saw my blushing face for the 
first time. 

Between him and my friend there had evidently 
been talk concerning me, and the question of 
what I might do for the house soon came up. 

"Not a novel — not just now; that may come 
later," Mr. Phillips said, in answer to a suggestion 
from me ; " but a domestic story, something that 
will make wholesome reading for young people 
and families. To be a book about this size," — 
handing me a small volume. " If you like to try 
your hand at something of the sort, I shall be 
happy to give it favorable consideration." 

Careful as he was not to commit himself fur- 
ther, and disappointed as I was not to receive a 
commission for a more important work, I accepted 
the humble task, and hurried to the Common to 
walk off my excitement and to think over the 



i 9 4 MY OWN STORY 

plan of a story. Before I went home to my room 
in Seaver Place, I had not only the motive and 
main incidents clearly in mind, but also the title 
of the book, to be named from the chief actor in 
it, — Father Brighthopes, the old clergyman whose 
gracious influence was to give character to the 
narrative. In a few days I sent Mr. Phillips the 
first fifty pages of the story, and went soon after 
to learn its fate. 

" I have n't had time to look at your manu- 
script," he said as I took the seat to which he 
motioned me. That was discouraging, for, being 
well launched in the narrative, it was important 
for me to know at once if I was to go on with it. 
" I carried it home with me, to Worcester, and 
gave it to my wife." My hopes pricked up a little ; 
I thought I had rather take a woman's opinion of 
it than that of the clearest-headed business man. 
Meanwhile I maintained a smiling serenity of man- 
ner, prepared for any fortune. 

His eye caught sight of a stocky figure passing 
the office door. " Ah, there is Mr. Broaders ! 
Mr. Broaders attends to our printing. Mr. Broad- 
ers, how long before you will have some proofs 
for Mr. Trowbridge ? " 

"There will be a batch to-morrow or next day," 
Mr. Broaders replied. " I can show him a sample 
page now, if he cares to look at it." 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 195 

I still endeavored to keep an unruffled demeanor, 
and answered, as if I had been accustomed to 
sample pages all my life, " Thank you, I should 
like to look at it." 

I was not dreaming; it was indeed a printed 
page of my story. 

" Then Mrs. Phillips did n't find it so very bad ? " 
I said, repressing a shiver of pleasant excitement. 
" I have more here, if she would like to see it." 

" She can read it after it is in type. The 
printers will want the manuscript as fast as you 
can furnish it, — won't they, Mr. Broaders ? — if 
we are to issue the volume this spring, which we 
think will be a good time for it." 

This was a bewildering surprise to me, but I 
merely remarked that I had expected to revise the 
manuscript carefully before it went to the printers. 

" What revision you find necessary can be done 
in the proofs," said Mr. Phillips, decisively, handing 
my second batch of copy to Mr. Broaders, with 
hardly a glance at it. 

So it chanced that the story passed into type 
about as fast as it was written, with all its imper- 
fections ; and I had n't the heart to do much to it 
in the proofs. In about three weeks it was ready 
for the binders, and it was published in that 
month of May, 1853. 

Its success was immediate, and far exceeded my 



196 MY OWN STORY 

expectations, for the little volume seemed to me 
exceedingly faulty, as soon as it had gone irrevo- 
cably out of my hands. The critics were kind to 
it; people of the most opposed sectarian views 
united in accepting Father Brighthopes as an em- 
bodiment of practical Christianity — that religion 
of the heart, which is no more a part of any creed 
than a living spring is a part of the strata through 
which its waters gush ; and I was soon gratified 
and humbled by hearing how he had affected many 
lives — more, I feared, than he had affected mine ! 
Readers of the book generally conceived of the 
author as himself a venerable clergyman ; and 
some who sought his acquaintance on account of 
it expressed incredulous surprise on finding him 
hardly more than a boy. 1 

IX 

Up to that year my health, although never ro- 
bust, had been uniformly good, often exuberant. 
In all weathers I enjoyed my daily walks, gave 
myself ample recreation, mental and social, and at 
one time, for about a year and a half, took sparring 
lessons of Professor Cram, and other vigorous ex- 
ercise, at his Gymnasium on Washington Street. 

1 This account of how Father Brighthopes came to be written 
is condensed from the Preface to the Revised Edition, issued in 
1892, forty-nine years after the original publication. 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 197 

But I was never a good sleeper, and often when 
my mind was too actively employed, and I most 
needed sleep, I got least. That spring I fell into 
a state which the doctors called " nervous debility," 
and having a horror of drugs, I spent the month 
of June at a water-cure establishment in Worcester, 
where I made a pretty thorough trial of the shower 
bath, sitz bath, wet-sheet pack, and other interest- 
ing processes pertaining to that treatment. Mr. 
Phillips, my publisher, lived in Worcester, and I 
had other agreeable acquaintances there. 

Edward Everett Hale was then in Worcester, 
settled over his first parish ; before his marriage 
he had boarded with Mr. Phillips, who knew him 
intimately, and who took me one Sunday to hear 
him preach. Dining with Mr. Phillips, after the 
services, I drew from him this opinion of Mr. 
Hale,— 

" Mr. Hale," he said, " is a very able man. But 
I doubt if he ever makes his mark in the world, 
for the reason that he lacks industry." 

A singular judgment, it may seem, in the light 
of what this " very able man " has since accom- 
plished. But the truth is, Mr. Hale was not in 
the habit of bestowing much study upon his ser- 
mons (the one I heard was short, and shall I be 
quite frank about it and say flimsy ?) ; and Mr. 
Phillips could not well foresee how far the wonder- 



198 MY OWN STORY 

fully versatile activity, the large understanding, 
and still larger heart of this preacher, philanthro- 
pist, man of letters, were to carry him in the next 
half hundred years. His " industry," if we may 
call it such, must have been prodigious, though 
not of the plodding sort, or centred overmuch in 
his sermons. 1 

1 In the summer of the World's Fair, at Chicago, riding away 
from a club dinner, in a coach with Dr. Hale and Eugene Field, 
I ventured to repeat this dictum, uttered by Mr. Phillips forty 
years before. Dr. Hale looked grave for a moment, as his mind 
glanced back to those old Worcester days, then dryly remarked, 
" Mr. Phillips was a good friend of mine, and — in most matters 
— a very sagacious man." 

Upon an occasion commemorating Dr. Hale's eightieth birth- 
day, April 3, 1902, I contributed the following reminiscence : — 

In writing a word for Dr. Hale's eightieth birthday, the first 
thing that occurs to me is the grudge I owe him for the constant 
rebuke his continued marvelous activity puts upon idle young 
fellows like me. I remember the first time I ever saw him, 
although I am sure he will not in the least recall the first time 
he saw me. It was in Worcester (where he was then settled 
over his first parish), forty-nine years ago this coming month of 
roses. I am certain of the year (1853), and I know it was rose- 
time, for as I was leaving his door in company with our " mutual 
friend," Mr. M. D. Phillips, the publisher, Mr. Hale turned 
aside from the garden walk to pluck a blooming wonder, which 
he handed me with the remark, " Mr. Trowbridge, are you 
learned in roses ? " Of course I was n't learned in roses, and of 
course he was. This was the first humiliation he ever put upon 
me, but I forgave him, for I carried away the color and the per- 
fume, and was willing to leave the science and the care of cul- 
tivation to him. For similar reasons, I pardon the manifold 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 199 

In Worcester, too, that summer, I first saw and 
heard another young minister, Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, presiding over a "free church " there, 
and preaching (in a hall, as I remember) sermons 
marked by the careful preparation, earnestness of 
thought, and grace of style which have character- 
ized all his subsequent work now for almost fifty 
years. The friend who took me to hear him told 
me that Higginson even then contemplated with- 
drawing from the pulpit in order to devote himself 
to literature. " Entreat him not to do that ! " I 
said, speaking out of my own experience of an 
author's early struggles, without considering his 
maturer years, or how well his academic training 
and thorough culture fitted him for boldly entering 
on a career of letters which in my undisciplined 
youth, and with my poor equipment, I had found 
so arduous. 

I did not derive any appreciable benefit from 
the douching, soaking, and skin friction to which 
I was subjected at the Worcester Water Cure. 
What I really needed was rest, or some treatment 
(if any treatment at all but Nature's own) that 
would soothe the nerves and restore nutrition, — 

reproaches laid upon my ignorance and inaptitude by his amaz- 
ing activities and acquirements, for I, too, like the rest of the 
world, have all the while been sharing the results of his later 
half-century of work in the rose-garden of humanity. 



200 MY OWN STORY 

safeguard the citadel, so to speak, instead of draw- 
ing the vital energies away from it by the constant 
surprises and assaults they had to resist at the 
harassed outposts. Moreover, the society of 
people whose invalidism was their chief interest in 
life and topic of conversation was not cheeringly 
tonic. 

On my way back to Boston I stopped to see my 
Trowbridge relatives in Framingham. When, at 
dinner, I had occasion to remark that I could n't, 
with impunity, eat all things set before me, a wise 
old grandam of the family poured for me a glass 
of hard cider, saying, " Drink it, and you '11 have 
no more of that trouble." I drank, and verified 
her prophecy. Whether I owed my restored di- 
gestion to the cider, or to some other cause, I 
cannot affirm. I had had a needed mental rest, 
and now the physical forces that had been so 
incessantly diverted to the surface by the water 
treatment turned inward, to the tired system's 
grateful relief. 



Not wishing to settle down at once to work, 
in July I set off on a more extensive journey 
than any I had hitherto undertaken. I found my 
mother in Lockport and took her with me to our 
relatives in Illinois ; then, in the course of the 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 201 

summer, continued my trip by stage-coach and 
steamboat to the " far northwest," as it was then 
called, — as far, in effect, as St. Paul and the Falls 
of St. Anthony. 

St. Paul had then twenty-five hundred inhab- 
itants ; the village of St. Anthony fifteen hun- 
dred ; there was no Minneapolis. The Mississippi 
fell perpendicularly, eighteen feet, over a horse- 
shoe of limestone ledge, into a wildly picturesque 
gorge, instead of sliding tamely down an inclined 
wooden " apron," as when I saw it sixteen years 
later ; the " apron " having been constructed to 
prevent the wearing away of the Falls. At that 
earlier visit, the bed of the river, below the cata- 
ract, was islanded by enormous blocks of the lime- 
stone stratum, fourteen feet in thickness, which 
had been undermined by the back eddies cut- 
ting out the softer substratum, and broken off by 
the weight of their own projecting mass ; and the 
work of destruction was still going on. 

It was a journey full of interest and adventure, 
and of discomforts not a few. The passage down 
the Illinois River was made memorable by the light- 
draft stern-wheel steamboat getting aground at 
low and still falling water ; by the terrible August 
sun beating down on us by day, and swarms of 
mosquitoes invading the cabin by night, where 
the sleepers snored in scattering volleys and by 



202 MY OWN STORY 

platoons. The return trip across northern Illi- 
nois, from Galena to Naperville, almost justified 
what was charged against some Western stage- 
coach routes in those days, that passengers who 
had paid their fares had to go afoot and carry 
rails. The rails were for prying the coach wheels 
out of the mud. I did my share of the walking, 
but conscientiously refrained from the rail carry- 
ing, after seeing an enraged settler rush out at us 
with a gun, to shoot the first man that laid hand 
to his dooryard fence. Fences were few and rails 
scarce ; and (being within range of his rifle) I 
inclined strongly to his view of the question. 

I returned to the East by the way of New York 
city, where I learned that my good friend Madame 
Perrault had been dead a year or two, and that 
poor little Raphael (no longer little) had a young 
stepmother, who, I was glad to learn, did not 
send him out so often as his own mother had 
done, with the bottle to be replenished. 

I got pretty nearly over my nervous debility 
that summer, and might have recovered quite, but 
for a passion that possessed me for spreading a 
new gospel among my relatives, and friends old 
and new. I had enjoyed, within the past year, 
what seemed to me a spiritual illumination, and 
had got so far beyond my early repugnance to the 
discussion of religious topics, that I burned with 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 203 

zeal to combat and overthrow the gloomy, irra- 
tional, humanly contrived doctrines that had bred 
in me that repugnance. I would hold forth half 
the night on this theme, to anybody who would 
listen ; and to my unspeakable satisfaction, there 
were those who listened, and rejoiced, and believed. 

XI 

Returning to Boston in October, I set to work 
at once to take advantage of the wind of success 
that had filled the sails of my first little book ; 
and by the middle of January (1854) had followed 
that by two more of a similar character, written 
one after the other, with the stereotypers at the 
heel of my pen. 

Then my publishers proposed to me what I had 
in vain proposed to them not so very long before, 
— a novel. A full-fledged work of fiction, as they 
called it, to be issued in monthly parts, after the 
manner with which Dickens and Thackeray had 
familiarized the public. I was at first dismayed 
by the suggestion, foreseeing how much to my 
disadvantage would be the comparison with those 
great writers which my following their fashion 
would seem to challenge. I was willing enough 
to undertake the work of fiction, but I desired to 
write it more at my leisure than would be possible 
with the inexorable printer waiting for my monthly 



2o 4 MY OWN STORY 

copy. The publishers argued that I could get a 
good start by beginning at once ; their plan being 
to bring out the first number in the spring. On 
the last day of January Mr. Sampson (whose pet 
scheme it was) took me to spend a night with him 
at his home in West Roxbury ; and when we 
parted at midnight, and I went to bed (but not to 
sleep), I had assented to the venture. To this 
day I marvel at my own temerity and at the firm's 
amazing confidence in me. 

February 6 I commenced writing Martin Mer- 
rivale, his X Mark ; by the middle of March I had 
three numbers (to make thirty-six large duodecimo 
pages each) in the hands of the illustrators and 
stereotypers ; and on May I the initial number 
was issued. Each number was to have as a fron- 
tispiece a carefully drawn illustration by Hammatt 
Billings, one of the most skillful designers of those 
days, but so exasperatingly remiss in keeping his 
engagements that after a deal of trouble in getting 
the first two or three blocks from him, I put my 
manuscript parts into the hands of S. W. Rowse 
(later the famous crayon artist), who furnished all 
the subsequent drawings, and with whom I had 
always the pleasantest personal and business re- 
lations. 

Early in July I took my work to Wallmgford, 
Vt., in a lovely valley of the Green Mountains, 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 205 

where I finished it late in August. The month 
of September I passed chiefly among the White 
Mountains, and returned to Boston about the last 
of the month, to see the concluding numbers of 
Martin through the press. There were to have 
been fifteen of these, but after seven or eight 
had been published separately, the remainder 
were issued together, in December, simultaneously 
with a bound volume containing the completed 
work. 

The subject of the story was a young writer 
from a rural village going to Boston to find a pub- 
lisher for his great romance, The Beggar of Bag- 
dad. His adventures among publishers, editors, 
and "brother authors," beginning at the foot of 
the hill of difficulty, the top of which he had ex- 
pected to reach at easy strides, were among the 
best things in it, if there were any " best ; " while 
the romantic and sentimental parts were the poor- 
est, and very poor indeed, in comparison with the 
high ideal I had had in mind when I set out to 
write. The issue in numbers was not a financial 
success ; and it was not until the volume had had 
time to make its way with the public, as it did but 
slowly, that I received any substantial returns for 
my steady half-year's labor. 



206 MY OWN STORY 

XII 

In the autumn of that year (1854) I assisted an 
especial agent of the Post Office Department in 
preparing for the press a volume of his varied and 
often amusing experiences ; and might have been 
engaged in a more strictly biographical piece of 
work but for my self-distrust. Dr. Wm. T. G. 
Morton earnestly desired me to write his life, 
giving particular attention to the details of his 
discovery of anaesthesia, which had latterly gained 
for him a world-wide renown. Without scientific 
attainments outside of his profession, that of dent- 
istry, but inspired with the faith that there must 
be some means of alleviating the sufferings he 
was himself often called upon to inflict, and, con- 
sequently, the more terrible agonies attending the 
surgeon's knife, he had sought aid and informa- 
tion wherever it was to be had ; but to him alone 
was due the credit of rendering painless opera- 
tions under etherization a practical success. No 
man who, in the face of difficulty and discourage- 
ment, has pursued a sublime but elusive idea to 
the final hour of triumph, ever experienced a 
prouder satisfaction than Morton must have felt 
when, at the first public demonstration of his 
method, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, 
October 16, 1846, Dr. Warren turned to the attend- 




DR. WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 207 

ing physicians, — up to that moment skeptical, if 
not contemptuous, and hardly yet convinced that 
the patient, who had slept tranquilly while a tumor 
was taken from his throat, was not dead, — and 
said to them decisively, "Gentlemen, this is no 
humbug ! " It was a magnificent reward for all 
his trials and sacrifices. But man cannot live by 
fame alone. Morton, when I knew him, was a 
poor man. He had given his discovery to human- 
ity, and would doubtless have received an early 
and ample grant from Congress for that incom- 
parable boon, had not rival claimants rushed in to 
dispute with him the honor, and ultimately to pre- 
vent the award. What he wished me to do was to 
lay the subject broadly and convincingly before 
the public, with the object of influencing Congress 
in his favor. I sincerely doubted my talent for 
doing a work of that sort or acting the part of an 
advocate, and after some hesitation declined it. 
When later I found I was not altogether lacking in 
such ability, I regretted not having written the 
biography of the originator of painless surgery. 

XIII 

In the following winter I had my first experi- 
ence in writing for the stage. Miss Kimberley, 
an actress of some note in those days, applied to 
me, through her manager, George Roberts, a well- 



208 MY OWN STORY 

known figure in Boston journalism and kindred 
enterprises, to translate for her Voltaire's tragedy 
of Semiramis, with a view to her assumption of 
the title role. As anything like a translation of 
the measured and monotonous alexandrines, in 
which are couched the interminable set speeches 
of Arzace, Otane, Assur, and the rest, would have 
emptied any American theatre, stampeding the 
best-intentioned audience in the very first act, I 
proposed a free adaptation by omissions and com- 
pressions, accelerating the movement, introducing 
two or three humorous minor characters to relieve 
the oppressive gloom of the drama, and rendering 
the whole in as terse idiomatic blank verse as I 
could command. My plan being approved, I set 
to work some time in February and completed the 
work in about three weeks. Roberts carried off 
the manuscript about as fast as it was written, 
and brought back from his protegee enthusiastic 
praises of rhy adaptation. As my object in under- 
taking it had been chiefly to raise money for a 
trip abroad in the spring, and as the party I was 
dealing with had not a very sound financial repu- 
tation, I exacted cash payments now and then as 
the sheets went out of my hands, but got caught 
on the last act, for which Roberts gave me only 
his autographic promise to pay, — a promise that 
was never redeemed. 



FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 209 

Miss Kimberley starred with Semiramis two or 
three seasons, with rather better success, I think, 
than she ever achieved in anything else. I had 
stipulated that my name should not be connected 
with it, not merely because it was hack-work of 
the most hurried kind, but likewise for the reason 
that the play was announced as " written ex- 
pressly " for her, without any reference to Vol- 
taire. The groundwork was Voltaire's, and there 
was enough of it to found a very good charge of 
plagiarism on, if I had claimed the paternity of 
the piece without acknowledging that origin. 
Often I gave the gist of twenty or thirty deliber- 
ate see-sawing lines in a swift phrase of two or 
three; and where I followed the original most 
closely I stripped away veils, to come directly at 
the thought, — as I did quite literally in the open- 
ing speech of the Queen, — where she sweeps 
across the stage, but pauses distractedly to ex- 
claim, — 

" O voiles de la mort, quand viendrez-vous couvrir 
Mes yeux remplis de pleurs et lasses de s'ouvrir ? " 

This I rendered, — 

O death ! O grave ! 
When will your welcome, everlasting shades 
Cover these aching orbs ? 

I wrote in passages that might, I fancy, have 



210 MY OWN STORY 

caused the sage of Ferney to lift his skeptical eye- 
brows a little, as when Semiramis contrasts the 
things of the spirit with the sterile philosophy 
with which her minister seeks to console her. 

O Philosophy, 
Thou cheat and plaything of the intellect, 
Thou comest not near the soul ! There is a sense 
And wisdom of the spirit deeper far 
Than thy most subtle and down-piercing roots 
Have ever struck. Things that thou deem'st unreal 
Are the essential substance that shall last 
When all this goodly show, this regal pomp, 
These towers and temples that adorn the globe 
And seem eternal, shall have passed away. 

I had no further pecuniary interest in the play 
than the partial payments I was fortunate enough 
to secure, and Mr. George Roberts's valuable 
autograph. 

In the spring (April, 1855) I went abroad, and 
spent ten months in Europe, seeing London, 
Paris, Florence, Rome, Naples, and other points 
of all-absorbing interest to an enthusiastic youth 
(of all which I dare not pause to speak), but pass- 
ing the summer and autumn mainly in Paris, where 
I completed another novel that marked an epoch 
in my literary activity. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 1 



Few of the present generation of readers will re- 
member the fugitive slave cases that agitated the 
country about the middle of the last century, one 
of which, that of Anthony Burns, shook the con- 
servative town of Boston as by a moral earthquake. 
To this affair especially, and to two or three simi- 
lar cases, I owed, in a large measure, the powerful 
impulse that urged me to the writing of an anti- 
slavery novel. How I was influenced by them ; 
how, almost in spite of myself, and against my own 
literary taste and judgment, I was led to construct 
a story with the one tabooed and abominated sub- 
ject craftily concealed (as was charged at the time) 
in the very heart of it, a surprise to be exploded 
like a bombshell in the face of unsuspecting read- 
ers, — how I came to commit this atrocity, if it 

1 This chapter comprises a large part of an Introduction to the 
latest, revised edition of the novel, Neighbor Jackwood. By the 
courtesy of the publishers, Messrs. Lee and Shepard, I am en- 
abled to add it to these memoirs, in the order in which it belongs. 



212 MY OWN STORY 

was one, I shall endeavor to show in this chapter 
of reminiscences. 

I early imbibed a prejudice against any agitation 
of the slavery question. In the small community 
in western New York where I was brought up, I 
knew, in my boyhood, only two outspoken aboli- 
tionists. One of these was our good Presbyterian 
minister, Mr. Sedgwick, a worthy man with an un- 
fortunate hobby, as it was deemed, and as perhaps 
it was. His hearers were all good Whigs and 
Democrats, who paid him for preaching sound 
doctrinal discourses, and did not care to be re- 
minded, Sunday after Sunday, that, as members 
of the two great political parties of the day, they 
were wickedly winking at a wrong committed in 
States some hundreds of miles off. Whatever the 
subject of his sermon, he was apt to introduce his 
delenda est Carthago somewhere in the course of 
it ; and he was particularly vehement in his argu- 
ments against those who endeavored to prove by 
the Bible that slavery was right. The other abo- 
litionist was a somewhat eccentric young man, who 
taught our district school two or three winters, and 
taught it very well. But as he was known to enter- 
tain erratic ideas on various subjects, and had been 
heard to declare that " even if the Bible said slavery 
was right, that would n't make it so," his advocacy 
was not of a kind to help an unpopular cause. In 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 213 

short, he did n't count ; and Mr. Sedgwick stood 
bravely alone, our sole, persistent, in-season and 
out-of-season, rabid abolitionist. 

I never was a good listener to sermons of any 
sort, unless they happened to be interesting ; and 
when imprisoned in the bare old meeting-house, I 
was usually thinking so intently of other things 
that I would hardly be aware of the unwelcome 
topic being hammered on the ministerial anvil, 
until I saw my father begin to fidget in his seat, 
and the frown to gather on his brow. Often the 
cloud would remain until dispelled by the genial 
influence of the late Sunday dinner. Once when 
I had been left at home, and went to open the 
dooryard gate for the one-horse family wagon as 
it drove up, I noticed the ominous scowl on my 
father's face, and said, loud enough to be heard, — 

" I guess Sedgwick has been pounding slavery 
on his pulpit cushion again to-day." 

"Another of his everlasting abolition ha- 
rangues ! " exclaimed my father, as he got down 
from the wagon at the door. " I wish I had some 
sort of patent, long-action, quick-pressure gag to 
spring on him the instant he speaks the word 
' slavery.' " 

And yet he was a hater of all kinds of oppres- 
sion, and one of the most scrupulously just men I 
ever knew. 



2i 4 MY OWN STORY 

"Wrong?" he would say. "Of course it's 
wrong ; nothing under heaven can make it right 
for one human being to own another. But what 's 
the use of fighting it here at the North ? Leave 
it where it is, and it will die of itself. Any serious 
attempt to abolish it will bring on civil war and 
break up the Union." 

He often made use of these stereotyped words ; 
but he would add, " I 'm opposed to the spread of 
it; we've a right to take that stand," — little 
dreaming that in less than twenty years a deter- 
mined "stand," taken by the North against the 
extension of slavery, would bring on attempted 

disunion and the civil war he dreaded. 

*■ ■ 

II 

So the subject of abolition became to me a dis- 
agreeable one, and continued so after I went to 
Boston in 1848, then in my twenty-first year. 1 I 

1 Since this was written a letter has been returned to me, 
which I wrote from Lockport, N. Y., to a sister in Illinois, in 
January, 1845, when I was seventeen years old. In it I speak of 
competing for the prize offered by the Niagara Courier, for the 
best poetical New Year's Address to its patrons, mentioned 
earlier in these pages. " I called at the office in a few days, and 
was told by the editor that mine was the best they had received, 
but that there was almost too much antislavery about it, and not 
enough Whiggism." I do not remember a line of the address, 
and am surprised to find that the abhorred subject cropped out 
in it. 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 215 

did not find it popular in that highly conservative 
city. The followers of Garrison and Phillips were 
few ; society looked upon them as dangerous fanat- 
ics, and the very name of abolitionist was covered 
with an opprobrium that clung to it long after the 
course of political events had justified their moral 
convictions. The slave power itself was fast doing 
more than its most relentless enemies could accom- 
plish towards awakening not Boston only, but all 
the North, to the insatiableness of its greed and 
the danger of its aggressions. Its reign was a reign 
of terror. Good people who, like my father, 
quieted their consciences with the cry, "Let it 
alone ! leave it where it is ! don't agitate the sub- 
ject ! " found that it would not be let alone, that 
it would not rest where it was, that it was itself 
the great agitator, which would not cease its 
menaces until it could flaunt its black flag over the 
whole abject Union. 

The enactment, in 1850, of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, turning all the North into a hunting-ground 
for escaping human chattels, roused a spirit of re- 
sistance in thousands who had hitherto remained 
indifferent, or timidly submissive, to the encroach- 
ments of the monster. It made an " antislavery 
fanatic " of me. How dangerous I was I did not 
myself suspect, until Mr. Ben : Perley Poore, then 
publishing his Sentinel in Boston, went off to 



2i6 MY OWN STORY 

Washington, and left me in charge of the paper, 
as I have already related. He had been gone a 
week or two, when something on the subject of 
Northern abolitionism in one of our Southern ex- 
changes provoked me to reply. I meant my article 
to be dispassionate and judicial ; and when it was 
written and carefully revised, I couldn't see any- 
thing in it that should give offense to right-think- 
ing readers. So I printed it. Then the deluge ! 
I hardly knew what I had done, when my good 
friend Poore came hurrying back from Washington, 
and walked most unexpectedly into the Sentinel 
office one morning, where he found me seated at 
the desk, unconscious as a cherub of any wrong- 
doing. When I expressed surprise at seeing him 
so soon, he said he thought it was time for him to 
come and look after his editor. Always genial and 
kind, he yet made me feel extremely uncomfort- 
able when he added, — 

" Good heavens, Trowbridge ! what were you 
thinking of, to turn the Sentinel into an abolition 
paper ? " 

" Is that the way you look at it ? " asked the 
cherub. 

" That 's the way subscribers will look at it," he 
replied. 

A good deal nettled, I said, " Then perhaps you 
would like me to leave the paper ? " 




BEN. PERLEY POORE 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 217 

" Leave the paper ? " he echoed, with about the 
bitterest laugh I ever heard from his lips. " Print 
another such article, and the paper will leave 
us!" 

He went on to give a grimly humorous account 
of the sensation my poor little screed created in 
Washington, where he had many friends and sub- 
scribers, all of proslavery sentiments, and of his 
sudden haste to leave that city. 

" Of course," he added, " I laid it all to the boy 
I had left in the office." 

"Well," I said, "what was there about the boy's 
article that they could reasonably object to ?" 

He was generous enough to reply, " Nothing, in 
my opinion. Every word of it is true enough. 
And you may think it strange that a man can't 
print in his own paper what he thinks on a great 
public question like slavery; but that is a fact. 
We shall see." 

And we did see. Angry protestations from 
subscribers were already lying unopened on his 
desk. More came in, from North and South alike ; 
and one of our South Carolina exchanges did me 
the honor to answer my article with an insolent 
threat of secession, — an old threat from that 
State, even in those days, and not altogether an 
idle one, as was so long believed. 

Mr. Poore was too good a friend to discharge 



218 MY OWN STORY 

me for an act of indiscretion already committed. 
But he was right in his prognostication. The 
paper soon after left us ; that, too, without the 
help of another antislavery leader. How many 
subscriptions my imprudence lost it I never knew. 
It never had too many. 

Ill 

I shared the intense interest awakened in Boston 
by its famous fugitive slave cases of 1850 and 
185 1, — the romantic escape of Ellen and William 
Craft, and the more notorious -and dramatic epi- 
sodes of Shadrach and Thomas Simms. Yet I 
hardly realized what inflammable antislavery stuff 
was in me, until the capture of Anthony Burns 
occurred, in May, 1854. 

I was living in bachelor lodgings in Seaver 
Place, engaged in writing Martin Merrivale, when 
the terrible realities of that event put my poor, 
fictitious characters to ignominious flight, and 
kindled in me a desire to write a novel on a wholly 
different subject. 

It was not easy, at that time, to take a runaway 
slave out of Boston ; secrecy and subterfuge had 
to be used, without much regard to the forms of law. 
Burns was arrested on a false pretext, and hurried 
before United States Commissioner Edward G. 
Loring, before it was known that kidnappers were 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 219 

again in the city. It had been hoped that the 
rescue of Shadrach and the tremendous difficul- 
ties encountered in the rendition of Simms would 
sufficiently discourage similar attempts, as indeed 
they did for a time. Burns had really been seized, 
not for any petty offense, as was pretended, but as 
a fugitive from the service of Charles F. Suttle, a 
Virginia slaveholder. The truth became quickly 
known, despite the precautions taken to conceal 
it ; and the report, which was made a rallying cry 
to the friends of the oppressed, " Another man 
kidnapped ! " ran with electric swiftness through 
the city. 

Commissioner Loring was also judge of probate, 
and a man of eminent respectability. In his pri- 
vate life he was, no doubt, just and humane. I 
was present, and watched his face with painful in- 
terest, when he rendered his decision in the case. 
In vain had Mr. Richard H. Dana made his elo- 
quent plea for the prisoner, warning the commis- 
sioner that what he was about to do would take 
its place in history, and praying that it might be 
in accord with a large interpretation of the law, 
with the higher conscience, and with mercy. The 
commissioner had evidently determined to perform 
what he deemed his duty, without any betrayal of 
emotion. His face was slightly flushed, but firm. 
My pity was not all for the slave ; some of it was 



220 MY OWN STORY 

for such a man in such a place. On a bench be- 
fore him sat Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips, 
the great preacher and the brilliant orator, whose 
certain and terrible denunciations of what he was 
about to do might well have made him pause. 
Perhaps, as a commissioner acting under the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, and ignoring the laws of Massa- 
chusetts, he could not have rendered a different 
judgment. But he might have resigned his com- 
mission, and washed his hands of the whole black 
business in that way. Without a tremor of lip or 
of voice, he coldly reviewed the evidence and the 
law in the case, and remanded Anthony Burns to 
slavery. Then Parker and Phillips arose, and 
walked arm in arm out of the court-room, convers- 
ing in low tones, with bowed heads and lowering 
brows. 

Meanwhile Boston was in a turmoil of excite- 
ment. Public meetings were held, an immense 
one in Faneuil Hall on the evening preceding 
the removal of the fugitive ; and that night there 
was a gallant attack upon the Court House in 
which he was confined. A stick of timber was 
used as a battering ram against one of the western 
doors, which was broken in ; there was a melee of 
axes, bludgeons, and firearms, and one of the 
marshal's guard was killed. But the assailants, 
led by that ardent young reformer, Thomas Went- 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 221 

worth Higginson, of whom, later, the world was 
to hear considerably more, and by a colored man, 
Lewis Hayden, were unsupported, and were driven 
back. 

Reports of the Faneuil Hall meeting and of the 
assault on the Court House rallied an immense 
crowd to Court Square and the adjacent streets 
the next morning, to witness the final act of the 
drama. It was a black day for Boston, that 27th 
of May, 1854 ; the passions of men were stirred 
to their depths, and often friends were divided 
against friends. I remember meeting in the crowd 
one with whom I had been on intimate terms not 
long before. He had been an officer in the Mexi- 
can war, and was as much of a Roman as to his 
nose and character as any man I ever knew. But 
that day the Roman in him was enlisted in a bad 
cause. Drawing me aside in the crowd, and open- 
ing his vest, he grimly called my attention to a 
revolver thrust into an inside pocket. 

"What *s that for, Ned ? " I asked, in the old 
familiar way. 

"lam one of the marshal's private deputies," 
he answered, with brutal frankness. " There are 
over a hundred of us in the Court House there 
and in this crowd. At the first sign of an attempt 
to rescue that damned nigger, we are going in for 
a bloody fight. I hope there '11 be a row, for it 's 



222 MY OWN STORY 

the top-round of my ambition to shoot an aboli- 
tionist." 

" Well, Ned," I replied, " you may possibly have 
an opportunity to shoot me ; for if I see a chance 
to help that * damned nigger ' I 'm afraid I shall 
have to take a hand." 

Any attempt of the kind at that time was out 
of the question. The broken door was barricaded ; 
the Court House was a fortress. Besides his hun- 
dred deputies, — men recruited for the most part 
from the brutal and vicious classes of society, fre- 
quenters of grog-shops and gaming-saloons, — be- 
sides this posse of desperadoes, disposed as his 
special guard and distributed through the crowd 
they were to watch and thwart, the marshal had 
the police force of Boston and a large body of 
militia, ostensibly to keep the peace, but practi- 
cally to aid him in his ignoble task. The Court 
House was encircled by bayonets, and Court Street 
and State Street were lined on both sides with 
files of troops, keeping a lane open all the way to 
Long Wharf for the expected procession. 

At last it set forth, led by a vanguard of armed 
police. " There he is ! " went up a half -stifled cry 
from the multitude; and there indeed he was, 
that one poor, hunted, black bondman, whom a 
derisive fate had that day made the most-talked-of 
and important figure in all New England. What 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 223 

must he have thought of the great concourse of 
citizens, the swords and clubs and muskets, that 
met his bewildered gaze as he walked forth from 
his prison ? — all there for him, the wretched and 
baffled runaway from Virginia ! I remember his 
scared black face, as he rolled his eyes about for 
a moment before he was hurried away ; not so 
very black, either, — a complexion rather of bronze 
than of iron, — with a gleam of excitement in it 
which was almost a smile. He had heard the 
blows that thundered against the Court House 
door the night before ; he knew what they meant ; 
he knew how Shadrach had been rescued ; but if 
he still cherished a hope of his own deliverance, 
it must have abandoned him at that moment. All 
was over. The free land to which he had escaped 
through difficulties and dangers was no free land 
for such as he. Back he must go to bondage and 
the lash. 

There was no pause. The marshal and his 
special guard inclosed Burns in a compact pha- 
lanx, following the vanguard, and another body of 
armed police brought up the rear. The march 
was rapid, amid groans and hisses, and now and 
then a cheer, from the ranks of spectators. From 
Court Square into Court Street, gazed at from 
hundreds of windows, some of which were draped 
in black in token of the city's humiliation ; past 



224 MY OWN STORY 

the old State House, and over the very ground 
where the first blood was shed preluding the Re- 
volutionary struggle, some of it the blood of a 
black man, — scene of the Boston Massacre ; and 
so on, down State Street, moved the strange pro- 
cession, between the two rows of bayoneted guns, 
to Long Wharf, where, by the President's orders, 
a revenue cutter was in waiting, to receive on 
board the kidnappers and their prey. 

IV 

It was a long time before I could sit down again 
quietly to the fiction on which I was engaged. I 
felt a burning desire to pour out in some channel 
the feelings which, long suppressed, had been 
roused to a high pitch of excitement by this last 
outrage. Still, something of the old repugnance 
to the subject of slavery remained ; I shrank from 
the thought of making a black man my hero ; the 
enormous popularity of Uncle Tom, instead of 
inciting me to try my hand at an antislavery 
novel, served rather to deter me from entering the 
field which Mrs. Stowe had occupied with such 
splendid courage and success. 

More than once, before the Anthony Burns 
affair, before Uncle Tom even, the fugitive slave 
as a subject for a novel had come up in my mind, 
and I had put it resolutely aside ; but now it pre- 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 225 

sented itself again, and persistently haunted me. 
"Why a black man?" I said to myself. "All 
slaves are not black. And why a man at all ? " 
as I thought of Ellen Craft. " Sympathy will be 
more easily enlisted for a woman, white, with 
native refinement and sweetness of character, and 
yet born a slave, with all the power and prejudice 
of legal ownership and cruel caste conspiring to 
defeat her happiness." And I fell to thinking of 
that worst form of slavery which condemned to a 
degrading bondage not those of African blood 
alone, but so many of the descendants of the 
proud white master race. 

Though I was hardly conscious of it, the thing 
was taking shape in my mind when I went to 
spend the summer (of 1854) at Wallingford, Vt., 
in the bosom of the Green Mountains. In the 
broad and beautiful valley of Otter Creek I found, 
in an old farm-house, a quiet place to live, and 
think, and write. I gave four or five hours a day 
to Martin Merrivale, and had ample leisure, in the 
long summer afternoons, to bathe in the streams, 
wander in the woods, climb the mountains, and in 
the course of my rambles make extensive acquaint- 
ance with the country and the people. 

One day, while exploring the interval about the 
confluence of Otter Creek and Mad River, — 
which became Huntersford Creek and Wild 



226 MY OWN STORY 

River in the novel, the scene of the fishing ad- 
venture of Mr. Jackwood and Bim, — lost, like 
them, amid the tortuous windings of the two 
streams, still further lost in my own imaginings, 
I suddenly saw rise up before me out of the 
tall grass the form of an old hag. And it was 
not an old hag at all, but a beautiful girl in dis- 
guise ; nor yet a girl, but really a creature of my 
own imagination, which appeared as vividly to my 
mind's eye as if it had been either or both. 

" Both it shall be," I said ; " a forlorn maiden 
in the guise of an old woman, lost here in this 
wilderness of alders and long grass and labyrin- 
thine streams ! — a mystery to be accounted for." 
And the phantom-like projection of my fancy 
took its place at once in the plan of the story, 
giving it life and form from that hour. 



I was impatient to get " Martin " off my hands, 
and to begin the new novel, of which I wrote the 
first chapters in the old Vermont farmhouse, in 
the midst of the scenes described. It was then 
thrown aside, to be taken up later, under very 
different circumstances. I carried the manuscript 
to Europe with me in the spring of 1855 ; and 
having settled down in Passy, just outside the 
walls of Paris (now a part of Paris itself), I resumed 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 227 

work upon it, writing a chapter, or a part of a 
chapter, every morning, and joining my friends 
in excursions in and about the gay capital in the 
afternoon. 

I had one friend there who, by his sympathetic 
and suggestive criticisms, assisted me greatly in 
my work. He read the manuscript almost as fast 
as it was written, and was always eager to talk 
with me about the incidents and characters, and 
their development ; thus keeping up my interest 
in them when it might otherwise have flagged 
amid the diversions of a life so strangely in con- 
trast with the life I was depicting. Often we 
walked together to the Bois de Boulogne of an 
evening, sat down on a bench by one of the lakes, 
and discussed the Jackwood family, Enos Crum- 
lett and Tildy, Hector and Charlotte, and the 
slave-catchers, until these became more real to us 
than the phantasmal beings, in carriages or on 
foot, moving before our eyes in the lighted park. 
This friend was Lewis Baxter Monroe, afterwards 
well known as Professor Monroe of the Boston 
School of Oratory, whom I shall have other oc- 
casions to mention, further on in these memoirs. 

The story finished, I had great trouble in nam- 
ing it. I suppose a score of titles were consid- 
ered, only to be rejected. At last I settled down 
upon "Jackwood," but felt the need of joining to 



228 MY OWN STORY 

that name some characteristic phrase or epithet. 
Thus I was led to think of this scriptural motto 
for the title-page : " A certain woman went 
down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among 
thieves." Which suggested the question, " Who 
was neighbor unto this woman ? " and the answer, 
" Neighbor Jackwoodr And I had my title. 

I read the proofs of the novel in the spring of 
1856, after my return to America ; but it was not 
published until the following winter, for a special 
reason, which found considerably less favor with 
the author than with the publishers. Mr. Phil- 
lips was afraid the work might be lost sight of in 
the dust raised by Mrs. Stowe's Dred, which he 
was to issue about the time my humbler venture 
was ready. I was repaid for this tax upon my 
patience when, after the book had been out a few 
days, and the press notices were beginning to 
come in, Mr. Phillips greeted me one morning 
with his peculiarly stately bow and a serene smile, 
and remarked significantly, " Our friend Jack- 
wood needn't have been afraid of anybody's dust." 

It had the advantage of a fresh and unhack- 
neyed theme, and was the first serious attempt to 
depict those phases of country life amid which the 
narrative moves, and to render the speech of the 
people with due regard to its humorous flavor, 
yet absolutely without exaggeration. Although it 




MOSES DRESSER PHILLIPS 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 229 

was written "with a purpose," that purpose was 
inclosed, as far as possible, in the larger aim of 
telling a strong and interesting story. Of course 
the antislavery element in it was liberally de- 
nounced, and the bombshell of surprise, before 
mentioned, caused a shock to the prejudices of 
many worthy people. They were horrified by the 
mere suggestion of a union between the hero and 
heroine. I had been careful to offset the cloud of 
heredity resting upon her by one more terrible 
lowering upon his family and threatening him ; 
but those so quick to take offense at the one gave 
no heed to the other. 

VI 

The success of the novel led to its dramatiza- 
tion by the author for the Boston Museum stage, 
then managed by the veteran actor W. H. Smith, 
who took the title role of Neighbor Jackwood. 
The part of Enos Crumlett was expanded to the 
proportions of William Warren, a comic actor of 
rare powers, for many years a prime favorite with 
Boston audiences, that never wearied of his broad 
yet delicate and genial humor. I engaged all the 
players to read the book while studying their 
parts, and thus secured unusually good persona- 
tions of the characters from a mediocre company. 
We had a bright young girl, Rose Skerritt, to 



2 3 o MY OWN STORY 

personate Bim. Mrs. Thompson, who was never 
a noticeably bright star in anything else, blazed 
out conspicuously as Grandmother Rigglesty, into 
which character she threw energies she was not 
before supposed to possess, — so conscientious in 
her presentation of it that, as Dr. Holmes re- 
marked, she "took out her teeth." 

The first night of the piece was memorable to 
at least one person in the audience. I went early 
to the theatre, and ensconced myself, with a 
friend, in an obscure corner, where I could care- 
fully watch the performance, to see where it 
dragged, and note whatever changes should be 
made in the inevitable " cutting " process to take 
place the next day. All went prosperously, until 
suddenly there was a hiss, and a storm of howls 
and hisses immediately followed. A crisis in the 
plot had been reached which roused the opposi- 
tion of the proslavery part of the audience, — a 
very large part, as it seemed for a while. A 
counter-storm of cheers and clappings set in, and 
there was a prolonged uproar that threatened to 
end the performance. Victory at last remained 
with the friends of the piece, and the performance 
proceeded. 

"You will cut out those objectionable speeches ?" 
my friend whispered in my ear. 

" No," I replied ; " I will strengthen them." 



WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 231 

An amusing incident occurred when we were 
on our way to the theatre that first night, Monday, 
March 16, 1857. Being just then personally 
interested in playbills, I turned aside to see what 
a man was pasting over one which I had regarded 
with especial satisfaction, whenever I passed it 
that day and the preceding Sunday. It was the 
bill of the next days performance of Jackwood ; 
and on it was announced, in the showy head-lines 
then in vogue, the astonishing success of the first 
performance, which we were then on our way to 
witness ! 

Tremendous Hit ! ! 

Received with Thunders of Applause ! ! ! 

"All right, only the man anticipates a little," 
said my friend, as we went on laughing. " But 
we '11 take it as a good omen." 

I may here add that this incident served as 
a hint for the opening lines of Author's Night, 
written a few years later : — 

" ' Brilliant Success ! ' the play-bills said, 
Flaming all over the town one day, 
Blazing in capitals blue and red, — 
Printed for posting, by the way, 
Before the public had seen the play" etc. 

Jackwood had a long and prosperous run on 
the boards in Boston, and was afterwards brought 
out in other places, but with less satisfactory re- 



232 



MY OWN STORY 



suits. In New York it was badly acted, all the 
naturalness and humor of the parts being de- 
graded to mere farce ; as I saw to my sorrow, on 
an occasion rendered the more harrowing to my 
feelings as an author by the fact that I had invited 
my friends of those years, Mr. and Mrs. Richard 
Henry Stoddard, and another friend who had 
accompanied me from Boston, to occupy a box 
with me at the absurd performance. 

It is now some years since the play has been 
represented by any professional company, but it 
is still used in amateur theatricals ; and the novel 
has never lacked readers. 



CHAPTER VII 

UNDERWOOD, LOWELL, AND THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 



I followed the play of Neighbor Jackwood 
on the Museum stage with a spectacular piece, 
Sindbad the Sailor, which also had a prosperous 
run of several weeks ; and did other work for the 
Museum proprietor, Mr. Moses Kimball, in the 
way of adaptation and dramatization. Meanwhile 
I contributed to two of the popular Philadelphia 
magazines, also to Putnam's and Harper's ; and 
in the summer of 1857 I made still another West- 
ern journey, writing letters for the New York 
Tribune over the signature of " Jackwood." 

In the fall of 1857 The Atlantic Monthly was 
started, an event I shall now give some account of, 
together with recollections of the man to whom, 
more than to any other, its inception was due. 

II 

I remember well the occasion of my first meet- 
ing with Francis Henry Underwood, much better 



234 MY OWN STORY 

indeed than I recall the month, or even the year, 
although I think it must have been late in the 
autumn of 1853. It was on a Monday morning, 
and he had been but an hour or two at the desk 
newly placed for him in the counting-room of 
Phillips, Sampson & Co. As I entered on some 
errand, the strange face looked up with a surprised, 
interested, penetrating expression, which kindled 
into cordial recognition as the urbane head of the 
firm approached and introduced us. 

He was then in the flower of early manhood, 
not quite twenty-nine years old, with a fine ruddy 
complexion, frank yet dignified manners, and an 
admirable aplomb which made him a noticeable 
man in any company. He had had his share of 
the varied experiences commonly attending the 
career of a typical self-made American. He had 
been school teacher, law student, and clerk of the 
Massachusetts State Senate in the stirring " coali- 
tion" days of 1852, when stalwart Henry Wilson 
was president of that body, and Banks and Hoar 
and other notable members of the House were in 
training for the wider arena of national politics. 
But his aspirations were always more literary than 
political, and after a year's service in the Senate 
he had found a more congenial position in the 
great publishing house, where his chief duties 
were to examine manuscripts offered for publica- 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 235 

tion, and conduct correspondence with authors. 
I found him extremely companionable, warming 
quickly to a new acquaintance ; and I envied in 
him the entire absence of that shyness which in 
me too often repressed the ardor of social im- 
pulses. He had many friends among all sorts of 
people, but principally among artists and writers. 
There was one, particularly, of whose intimacy he 
was justly proud, the brilliant wit and poet of Cam- 
bridge, — " my friend Mr. Lowell," as he com- 
monly spoke of him with undisguised satisfaction. 
I saw him almost daily at his office, but our 
real intimacy began when first he invited me to 
his house. " Come and dine with me on Sunday," 
he said, "and in the afternoon we will walk over 
to Elmwood." It was a red-letter day for me, 
when I went out from Boston at the appointed 
time, found him in his modest home (he was liv- 
ing in Cambridge), and after dinner walked with 
him to the home of the Lowells. 

Ill 

I had never yet seen the author of the Biglow 
Papers and A Fable for Critics ; and the antici- 
pation of meeting him sensitized my mind for 
sharp and enduring impressions. I retain a dis- 
tinct picture of Elmwood as it looked that after- 
noon : a spacious, square, old-fashioned mansion, 



236 MY OWN STORY 

standing in the midst of snow-covered grounds, 
and surrounded by tall trees and clumps of ragged 
lilacs, all bare of foliage except the pines lifting 
their golden-green tops in the wintry sunshine. 
My guide entered like a familiar guest, and led 
the way up three flights of stairs to a large front 
room, which was the poet's study. Mere words 
often convey to the mind impressions of form and 
color ; and I had conceived of Lowell — not from 
anything he had written, but solely from the sound 
of the two syllables of his name — as a tall, dark, 
dignified person, with a thin face, ample forehead, 
and prominent nose. Very great, therefore, was 
my surprise when I was ushered into the presence 
of a compact little man in short velvet jacket, 
with wavy auburn hair parted in the middle over 
a full, fair forehead that appeared neither broad 
nor high, and a bright, genial face more expres- 
sive of the vigorous and humorous Hosea than of 
the exalted Sir Launfal. 

The easy cordiality of his greeting put me at 
once at my ease, and prepared me for the enjoy- 
ment of a delightful occasion. He was accus- 
tomed to receive, at that hour on Sunday after- 
noons, a small circle of friends, among whom he 
was the shining central figure. Soon after our 
arrival Robert Carter came in, a short, sturdy 
man, with a big forehead spanned by a pair of gold- 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 237 

bowed spectacles, a walking cyclopaedia of infor- 
mation. Dr. Estes Howe, Lowell's brother-in-law, 
and two or three others made up the company, 
and a quiet, desultory conversation ensued ; not 
at all that of gods discoursing " from peak to peak 
all about Olympus," but very much like the talk 
of men of sense and culture anywhere. Some 
good stories were told, there was now and then a 
meteoric pun, or a wise observation illumined a 
subject like the sudden flash of a search -light ; 
but what interested me most was the reading by 
Lowell of some verses which I do not remember 
ever to have seen in print. The talk turning upon 
French poetry, he took from a shelf of ponderous 
volumes a work of Voltaire's, from which he first 
read us a part of Hamlet's soliloquy in the great 
Frenchman's attenuated and flexible alexandrines ; 
a version as much like the original as some luxu- 
riant vine is like a rugged trunk it climbs and 
hides. This paraphrase Lowell had retranslated 
into English quite faithfully, giving it, however, 
some sly turns to bring out with ludicrous effect 
its graceful feebleness in contrast with the sen- 
tentious Shakespearean lines. 

It was late in the afternoon when the company 
separated, and I went home to tea with Under- 
wood ; then in the evening I walked back to Bos- 
ton, stopping long on the bridge — one of Lowell's 



238 MY OWN STORY 

" caterpillar bridges crawling with innumerable legs 
across the Charles" — to watch the stars mistily 
wavering in the dark, full river, and to think over 
the events of the afternoon. 

Besides these Sunday afternoons at Lowell's 
there were Friday evening gatherings, — " osten- 
sibly for whist, at the house of each of the party 
in turn," as Underwood tells us in the The Poet 
and the Man. The whist club included Lowell, 
Carter, John Bartlett, John Holmes, and other 
friends and neighbors of Underwood. Then there 
were very informal dinners in Boston, nearly al- 
ways attended by him and Lowell, and often by 
Edmund Quincy, Francis Parkman, and Dr. 
Holmes. Such were some of his associates, and 
all who knew him will attest how generous he was 
in sharing old friendships with new friends. If 
never any false pride deterred him from making 
his friends useful to him, he had the right of one 
who was equally ready to serve them or to make 
them useful to one another. One especial favor 
which he would have done me I recall with min- 
gled gratitude and regret. Hearing that I was 
intending to go abroad in the spring of 1855, he 
interested himself in my plans, and one morning 
met me with a significantly uplifted finger, and 
the startling announcement, " It is all arranged ; 
you are going with Mr. Lowell ! " 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 239 

Startling indeed, for although I knew that Mr. 
Lowell, lately appointed professor of modern lan- 
guages in Harvard University, to succeed Mr. 
Longfellow, was to have a year of study in Europe 
before assuming the duties of that position, I had 
not conceived the possibility of having him for a 
fellow passenger. 

" I have talked it over with him. He is going 
in a sailing-vessel, and you two will probably be 
the only passengers. Don't say a word against 
it ! " Underwood went on, as I murmured some- 
thing about different arrangements. " Take my 
advice, — cancel them ; give up everything else 
for this rare chance." 

Alas, those different arrangements ! My friend 
Monroe (mentioned in the preceding chapter) was 
going abroad with three Spanish-American youths 
to superintend their education in Paris, and I had 
engaged to accompany them. Neither he nor 
they could speak French, and my familiarity 
with that language was depended upon to aid in 
establishing them in the great foreign metropolis. 
Time was important to them, and they were 
to make the voyage in a steamer. I should 
myself have preferred the more leisurely and less 
expensive passage ; and I knew how delightful 
as well as profitable to me, with my imperfect 
education and unsettled literary aims, would be 



2 4 o MY OWN STORY 

a month's daily intercourse with a finished man 
like Lowell, in the vast and unbroken seclusion 
of the ocean. But I could not well change my 
plans. Underwood called me an idiot, as perhaps 
I was. But he did not weary of serving me ; 
and I cannot forbear the pleasure of recording an- 
other instance of his active friendship. When I 
came home, a year later, with the manuscript of 
Neighbor Jackwood in my trunk, he took a lively 
interest in putting it through the press ; and it 
was afterwards through his mediation that I was 
engaged to make a dramatic version of it for the 
Boston Museum stage. 

IV 

Boston had as yet no magazine that could com- 
mand the united support of the best writers and 
of an appreciative public. The Dial, started in 
1840, with such contributors as Emerson, Theo- 
dore Parker, and Margaret Fuller, was designed 
as a vent to the new wine of Transcendentalism, 
and commended itself chiefly to the few who had 
felt the fine intoxication of that ferment. It was 
near its last days when, in 1843, Lowell and his 
friend Robert Carter started The Pioneer, with 
Poe and Hawthorne in its list of contributors ; 
which also failed for the lack of something behind 
it more substantial than enthusiasm and genius. 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 241 

Up to the time I write of there had been no other 
noteworthy venture of the sort. There was, in- 
deed, the scholarly and exclusive North Ameri- 
can Review, an able quarterly, which had not yet 
metamorphosed itself to a monthly and emigrated. 
Philadelphia had its three graces, Graham's, Go- 
dey's, and Sartain's, and New York its old Knick- 
erbocker, new Harper's, and Putnam's ; why then 
should not Boston be represented by a monthly 
of her own, worthy of her literary reputation, and 
of the authors who stood ready to contribute to its 
pages ? This was a question one often heard dis- 
cussed ; the idea was in the air, as they say, like 
so many ideas that wait for the right hour and the 
right man for their materialization. 

The man in this case was Underwood, whose 
position made him a connecting link between a 
circle of brilliant writers and a publishing firm 
of enterprise and reputation. He had made an 
earlier unsuccessful attempt to establish it, with 
J. P. Jewett & Co. as publishers ; and he now 
talked it over again with his literary friends, on 
the one hand, particularly with Professor Lowell ; 
and with Phillips, Sampson & Co., on the other, 
particularly with the "Co." Mr. Sampson was 
then in feeble health, and practically out of the 
business. Mr. Phillips, affable but dignified, had 
a glacial atmosphere when urged to consider pro- 



242 MY OWN STORY 

positions which his judgment failed to approve, 
and Underwood found his cold side when he 
talked to him of the magazine. The "Co." in 
those days was Mr. William Lee, then a young 
man, later of the firm of Lee & Shepard. He and 
Underwood were on intimate terms; and when 
Underwood came in, electrically charged, from 
conferences with his Cambridge friends, he found 
Lee a good conductor. The two partners were 
in the habit of going out to lunch together ; and 
in that hour of relaxation the junior would some- 
times bring up the subject of the proposed mag- 
azine, arguing that they ought not to miss so 
magnificent an opportunity. The cooperation of 
Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Haw- 
thorne, Holmes, — a dazzling array of names, — 
was assured ; and no doubt that of the then most 
popular writer in the world, a woman, could be ob- 
tained. Warming by degrees, the senior at last 
said he would consult Mrs. Stowe. 



Four or five years before, the manuscript of 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, or rather the scrapbook con- 
taining the newspaper chapters clipped from the 
National Era, had been offered to Messrs. Phillips, 
Sampson & Co. for publication in book form. The 
firm had at that time a large Southern trade, 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 243 

which they feared would be imperiled by the ap- 
pearance of their imprint on the title-page of that 
flaming antislavery tract in the guise of fiction. 
Nobody could have foreseen that Uncle Tom was 
to create for itself a book trade of more value in 
a single year than the ordinary trade of any house 
for a decade ; so that we need not marvel at the 
seeming short-sightedness of Mr. Phillips when, 
after a brief consultation with his partners, he de- 
clined the proffered book with his customary 
courtesy and "with thanks." It went to an ob- 
scure Boston bookseller, who had little to risk by 
the undertaking, and, as it proved, fortune and 
immense publicity to gain. Its success not only 
revolutionized public sentiment on the subject of 
slavery ; it also converted booksellers from their 
conservative views of the relative value of a South- 
ern trade. Mrs. Stowe could well afford to for- 
give the slight put upon a performance that had 
vindicated itself so triumphantly ; and receiving 
an intimation that Mr. Phillips would not decline 
a second work of hers, she had, in 1854, given the 
firm her Sunny Memories, following it in 1856 
with the antislavery novel, Dred. 

The publisher and the authoress were on exceed- 
ingly friendly terms, and Mrs. Stowe rarely came 
to town without calling upon Mr. Phillips. It 
was noticeable that while she gave to some of the 



244 MY OWN STORY 

humble frequenters of the Winter Street store one 
or two careless fingers, the whole of the little hand 
that had written the most famous book of modern 
times went out very graciously to him. When he 
mentioned to her the project of the new magazine, 
she received it with instant and cordial approval, 
and promised it her earnest support. The pub- 
lisher hesitated no longer; a chain of agencies 
had accomplished what might never have come 
to pass had either one of them been absent. I 
remember Underwood's radiant countenance when 
one morning he announced to me in strictest con- 
fidence that the proposed publication was finally 
decided upon ; that Lowell was to be editor in 
chief, and that he was to be Lowell's assistant. 
I dare say my own face grew radiant, too, when 
he went on to say that a contribution from me 
would be expected for the first number. 

VI 

The new venture was not yet named, and while 
all of us who were in the secret were ransacking 
our wits for a good title, Dr. Holmes, who seemed 
ever ready with the right thing at the right mo- 
ment, christened it The Atlantic Monthly. 

Early in June, 1857, Underwood went abroad 
in the interest of the forthcoming magazine, taking 
letters to the foremost British from the best-known 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 245 

American writers. Emerson alone, in a charac- 
teristic note, declined to furnish the desired in- 
troductions. " Since my foreign correspondents 
have ceased sending their friends to me, it seems 
hardly fair," he wrote, "that I should accredit any 
of mine to them." It was Underwood's first trip 
to Europe, and the mission was very greatly to his 
mind. 

It was the intention to issue the initial number 
a month or two before it actually appeared, and it 
was to open with the first chapters of a serial 
story by Mrs. Stowe. This she was unable to fur- 
nish, hindered, I think, by some domestic calamity. 
Then came the financial panic of that year, and it 
was feared the publication might have to go over 
to the next year, or be postponed indefinitely, — a 
peculiarly dismal prospect to writers whose con- 
tributions had been accepted. Few people were 
aware how narrowly the great publishing house 
escaped collapse in that tempestuous time. It 
was October when the delayed first number ap- 
peared, bearing date November, 1857. 

In this age of magazines, great and small, when 
nobody is surprised to hear of new ones starting 
up every few months, it is difficult to conceive of 
the wide interest excited by the advent of the long- 
expected Atlantic. The articles were unsigned, 
which Mr. Phillips himself thought a mistaken 



246 MY OWN STORY 

policy, with so resplendent a group of names that 
might have served to emblazon the announce- 
ments. The publishers' self-denial found compen- 
sation, however, in the interest of the riddles of 
authorship which the public was each month in- 
vited to solve. That of some of the principal 
articles was generally an open secret, while the 
guesses as to others were often amusing enough ; 
as when a poem by a little known writer was 
copied and went the rounds of the press attributed 
to Longfellow or Emerson, — an incident not cal- 
culated to please either him who was thus deprived 
of his due credit (as I can attest from my own ex- 
perience), or the other who had a doubtful honor 
thrust upon him. 

In place of the hoped-for chapters of a serial, 
Mrs. Stowe had in the first number only a short 
story, The Mourning Veil, which was disappointing. 
When asked why so slight a sketch had been 
admitted, Underwood replied, " When a boy goes 
a-fishing and catches a small fish, he puts it into 
his basket for luck, hoping to catch a big one by 
and by." The magazine caught a big one indeed 
when, a few months later, The Minister's Wooing 
began to appear in its pages. 

To that first number Emerson contributed, be- 
sides an essay, four short poems, one of them the 
mystical Brahma, which was to be more talked 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 247 

about and puzzled over and parodied than any- 
other poem of sixteen lines published within my 
recollection. " What does it mean ? " was the 
question readers everywhere asked; and if one 
had the reputation of seeing a little way into the 
Concord philosophy, he was liable at any time to 
be stopped on the street by some perplexed in- 
quirer, who would draw him into the nearest door- 
way, produce a crumpled newspaper clipping from 
the recesses of a waistcoat pocket, and with knit- 
ted brows exclaim, " Here ! you think you under- 
stand Emerson ; now tell me what all this is 
about, — ' If the red slayer think he slays, 1 " and 
so forth. 

Longfellow contributed his beautiful tribute to 
Florence Nightingale, Santa Filomena; Lowell 
had a versified fable and a sonnet ; and there was 
a paper by Motley, whose early novels of Morton's 
Hope and Merry Mount had been forgotten, while 
his Rise of the Dutch Republic had suddenly 
placed him in the front rank of living historians. 
But the great surprise of the number was a con- 
tribution which, if not by a new hand, showed that 
a new force had entered into our literature ; the 
first of a series of papers of inimitable wit and 
brilliancy, by a hand that never seemed to grow 
old nor to lose its wonderful facility, until it was 
laid to rest in Mount Auburn, — the hand of the 



248 MY OWN STORY 

kindly and beloved Autocrat of the Breakfast- 
Table. 

I was the youngest, and, with a single excep- 
tion, am now the sole survivor of the group of 
contributors to that first number. 

Underwood enjoyed greatly his position on the 
magazine. Every article offered passed through 
his hands, but though he possessed unlimited 
power of rejection, the power of final acceptance 
rested solely with Lowell. Yet Underwood was 
not merely the coarse sieve this might imply. He 
often made up the numbers, subject, however, to 
Lowell's approval ; he conferred with authors, and 
he was himself also a contributor. He had done 
a useful work in uniting the forces that combined 
to originate the magazine, but the character of it 
was entirely the creation of Lowell. 

VII 

The death of Mr. Phillips and the subsequent 
breaking up of the firm in 1859 resulted in the 
severance of Underwood's connection with the 
magazine. He soon found other employment, and 
held successively, under Cleveland's two adminis- 
trations, the positions of consul at Glasgow and at 
Edinburgh. 

Abroad, his fine presence, his public addresses 
and after-dinner speeches, and more particularly 



; 




FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 249 

his lectures on American Men of Letters, made 
him a prominent figure in society ; and the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow recognized his distinction by 
conferring upon him the degree of LL. D. 

He had a varied, an interesting, and on the 
whole an enviable career, which closed in Edin- 
burgh in 1894. He found unfailing enjoyment in 
literature, music, and art, in friendship and in 
congenial labor ; and his love of nature remained 
fresh and vigorous to the last. He wrote bio- 
graphical sketches of Longfellow, Whittier, and 
Lowell; compiled handbooks of American and 
English literature ; and was the author of two or 
three novels. Undoubtedly, his representative 
work, the work by which Dr. Underwood will be 
best remembered, is Quabbin, the Story of a 
Small Town, his own native Enfield, written in 
Glasgow in an interval of leisure between his two 
consulships. In the work on which he was en- 
gaged at the time of his death, The Builders of 
American Literature, only one volume of which 
was completed and published, occur these words 
regarding an earlier man of letters : " The literary 
world has need of such accomplished and indus- 
trious writers, and could often spare more bril- 
liant men," — words that will apply with equal 
justice to Francis Henry Underwood himself. 



250 MY OWN STORY 

VIII 

The starting of The Atlantic was to me an event 
of vital interest and importance. It was a distinc- 
tion for a young writer to appear in its pages. 
The pay for contributions was for those days un- 
precedentedly liberal, and the hospitality of its 
covers afforded a stimulus to high endeavor. I 
contributed to the early volumes poems, stories, 
sketches of travel, and one political paper, We are 
a Nation, into which I poured the fervor of my 
patriotic feeling, on the second election of Lincoln. 

I had followed as faithfully as I could Major 
Noah's advice as to writing prose instead of poetry. 
Having burned my metrical romances, I wrote 
verse only at intervals for the next ten years. 
Then with the ampler leisure gained by the publi- 
cation of my books, I returned to my early love. 
I find, on looking back, that I contributed to the 
first volumes of The Atlantic articles in verse 
oftener than anything else, among them some of 
my most prosperous poems, At Sea, Midsummer, 
The Pewee, and another that had such unusual 
fortunes, and regarding which I am so often ques- 
tioned, that I will give a brief account of it here. 

As long ago as the summer of 1855 I saw in the 
streets of Paris a strolling showman with a troupe 
of six trained dogs. The appearance of the man, 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 251 

his good-humored drollery, evidently masking more 
serious traits of character, and his almost human 
relations with his patient, dumb friends, must have 
impressed me more than I was aware ; for, after 
my return to America the year following, he came 
up in my mind as the subject of a dramatic sketch, 
which soon began to sing itself in rhyme. I dis- 
carded five of the dogs, in order to concentrate 
attention and sympathy upon one; and allowed 
the master to tell his own story, with which I 
seemed to have little more to do than to put it into 
form. When about half written it was thrown 
aside for work I deemed more immediately impor- 
tant, and the fragment lay neglected in my desk for 
two or three years. Then one day I chanced to 
look it over just before setting out on a long ram- 
ble ; more stanzas began to link themselves to 
those freshly called up in my memory, and by the 
time I returned from my walk I had the poem ready 
to commit to paper in its nearly completed shape. 
I was then at a loss to know what to do with it ; 
for I did not imagine that the only magazine I was 
in those days sending poems to would welcome 
anything so vagabondish as The Vagabonds. I 
read it to a few friends, who listened to it with 
moist eyes, but who confirmed my misgivings as 
to its having sufficient dignity for The Atlantic. 
So it went back into my desk, to lie there two or 



252 MY OWN STORY 

three years longer, until one who had come to be 
nearer to me than all others, reading it or hearing 
it read, with joy and tears declared that it must be 
published at once. I took her advice, but in send- 
ing it forth I was careful to accompany it with 
another poem, sufficiently literary, By the River, 
which I thought would serve to keep my Vagabonds 
in countenance. Proofs of the one in which I had 
least confidence were the first to come to me for 
correction, and on a margin appeared the surpris- 
ing note in blue pencil, — " Perfectly beautiful, 
nothing could be finer in its way — whom by ? " 
the proof-reader's query addressed to the editor, 
The Atlantic contributions in those days being un- 
signed. 

Once more I heard from it before it reached the 
public, Mr. James T. Fields (then editor) having 
given an advance copy to an elocutionist, and heard 
him read it with " wonderful effect," he assured me, 
one evening at Mr. Longfellow's house in Cam- 
bridge. Fields then predicted for it a great suc- 
cess on lyceum platforms ; astonishing me by 
saying that, for public recitation, there had been 
nothing like it since Poe's Raven. 

To Fields I was indebted for the name of the 
dog, " Roger ; " a circumstance I had forgotten, 
but which was recalled to mind when, some time 
after, Mrs. Fields showed me in their house on 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 253 

Charles Street an album of autograph poems, — 
many of them by writers the most famous of the 
day, — bound up with which I discovered the 
original manuscript copy of The Vagabonds, with 
the word " Roger " in Fields's well-known hand, 
written over the less euphonious name (whatever 
it may have been) that I had bestowed on the wan- 
dering fiddler's companion. 

The poem received universal commendation 
from the press, with a single noticeable excep- 
tion ; almost every writer has his one especial, 
never-failing, unrelenting, untiring assailant in the 
ranks of the critics, and I had mine. The maga- 
zine number containing it (March, 1863) had been 
out a short time, when my oldest sister wrote to 
me from Illinois to ask if I could tell her anything 
about the author of that strange poem, The Vaga- 
bonds. She went on to say, " I cannot help feel- 
ing that it was written by a person who has gone 
through some such terrible experience of intem- 
perance and misery as he describes." I hastened 
to inform her that the author was a no more dis- 
sipated wretch than her own younger brother, 
whose art she had complimented in suspecting 
his sobriety of character. 

The piece was taken up by public readers all 
over the country, and I soon heard of it in places 
as remote as Melbourne and Shanghai. Often 



254 MY OWN STORY 

one would come to recite it to me, under the pre- 
tense of asking for criticism and suggestion, but 
in reality to get some written word of approval 
that might help him with the public. To one 
who brought letters commendatory of his art 
from such men as Horace Greeley, Dr. Bellows, 
and Bayard Taylor, I said, with the absolute sin- 
cerity I used towards all, — "I have heard others 
deliver the poem, and I must do you the justice 
to declare that I never heard any one begin to read 
it as badly as you do." His theatrical mannerisms 
and false intonations caused me to ask to look 
again at the letters ; but they were undoubtedly 
genuine. How he could ever have obtained them 
was a marvel and a mystery. After some dis- 
cussion, I said to him at parting, " You feel a little 
hard towards me now, but some time you will see 
that I have done the kindest thing in my power 
by telling you the truth." He went from me to 
an eminent elocutionist, recited The Vagabonds 
to him, elicited his criticisms, and then explained 
why he wished for them : " I lately read it to the 
author, and was unwilling to accept his judgment 
of my rendering, but you have corroborated it in 
every particular." 

The most powerful interpretation of the poem 
I ever listened to in private was by that exceed- 
ingly clever personator, Sol Smith Russell ; the 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 255 

best public ones were by Professor Churchill, of the 
Andover Theological Seminary, and James E. Mur- 
dock, the actor. It was even taken up by women 
elocutionists, one of whom, a talented lecturer and 
entertainer, produced with it an effect that was at 
least novel, through the contrast between the vaga- 
bondish character represented and her own ele- 
gant manners and fashionable attire. 

A holiday edition of the poem, with drawings 
by F. O. C. Darley, was brought out at Christmas 
time, 1863 ; and I afterwards made The Vaga- 
bonds the leading poem of my first volume of 
collected verse. 

IX 

Of my Atlantic stories the most important 
was Coupon Bonds, which after its appearance in 
two numbers of the magazine (Sept. and Oct., 
1865) was in such demand that a large separate edi- 
tion was issued in paper covers. Bankers became 
interested in its distribution ; and one of the most 
active in popularizing the enormous loans necessi- 
tated by the war, himself once assured me that 
the story had an appreciable influence in stimu- 
lating confidence in the government and its 
securities. 

A play constructed from it mainly by the use 
of paste and scissors was brought out by Miss 



256 MY OWN STORY 

Alcott and her friends in Concord ; other versions 
were produced in different places, the author of 
one of which threatened to sue the chief promoter 
of the Concord play (Mr. G. B. Bartlett) for in- 
fringement of copyright. I then made a careful 
dramatic version, which I copyrighted and pub- 
lished ; it was for a long time in lively demand, 
and is still acted by amateur companies. 

I remember but one serious criticism of the 
naturalness of the incidents and characters in the 
story ; and that was a sound one, from the critic's 
point of view. Some friends of mine once visited 
a well-to-do Western farmer, who maintained that 
nobody was ever so anxious about the safety of 
valuable documents as the Ducklows were about 
their coupon bonds. Being left by themselves in 
the family sitting-room, one of the party took up 
a book from the table and dropped out of it upon 
the carpet a folded paper. It was a thousand-dol- 
lar government bond ; and probably not the only 
one that might have been picked up, lying about 
the house. 

The sketches of travel I contributed to The 
Atlantic were two, descriptive of the battle-fields 
of Gettysburg and the Wilderness which I visited 
after the close of the war, as I shall relate farther 
on ; A Carpet Bagger in Pennsylvania, three papers 
on the coal and oil regions of that State in 1869 ; 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 257 

and in the following year three articles giving an 
account of a trip to the wilds of Minnesota and to 
a then new settlement at the head of Lake Su- 
perior, — the rough cocoon of the city of sub- 
sequent marvelous growth and prosperity, Duluth. 



In the mean time had occurred an event to 
which I have briefly alluded in my notice of 
Underwood, but which deserves fuller mention, 
since it was to me, at the time of it, almost a 
calamity. The first publishers of The Atlantic 
were, as I have stated, likewise the publishers of 
my books. The death of Mr. Sampson and that 
of Mr. Phillips, which took place soon after, led 
to the breaking up of the firm, in the fall of 1859, 
and the sale at auction of its enormous stock of 
books and sheets and stereotype plates. My own 
books went to a New York house, that of a step- 
mother, so to speak, very different from the home 
where they had been born, their exile from which 
I felt as a personal grief. 

Fortunately The Atlantic went into good hands, 
those of Ticknor & Fields ; regarding which ac- 
quisition by the latter firm it is interesting to 
note that it was a project of the elder and, one 
would have supposed, the more conservative mem- 
ber, while it was opposed by the junior, whose 



258 MY OWN STORY 

literary tastes and associations with authors would 
have seemed likely to render him 'the more ear- 
nest of the two in its favor. The price looked 
formidably large for those days, and Mr. Fields 
deemed it too hazardous an undertaking. If he 
had been on the ground he might have thought 
differently ; but he was abroad, and could be con- 
sulted only by transatlantic communication. The 
sum involved ($10,000) was in truth a moderate 
one, considering the enormous prestige of the 
reputation of the magazine, and of its galaxy of 
writers, and in view of all the advantages secured 
to the house making the purchase ; at all events 
the senior's courage and sound judgment were 
abundantly vindicated. My contributions to it 
continued, and resulted for me later in intimate 
business relations with that firm and its successors. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CUDJO'S CAVE AND OTHER WAR STORIES — A 
NEW HOME 

I 

Political convulsion succeeded the dissolution 
of the firm of Phillips, Sampson & Co., and 
brought new discouragement, in addition to that 
caused by the loss of their friendly interest in my 
books. The Southern sky was black with clouds 
that burst in the Civil War. I was still writing 
for the magazines, and also applying myself, 
rather languidly, to another work of fiction, when 
the great national conflict, which had set back 
the waters of my literary course, forced them with 
accumulated impetus into a new channel. 

Having allayed the excitement which impelled 
me to write one antislavery novel, I did not enter- 
tain the possibility of ever being moved to write 
another. Political events rushed rapidly to a crisis, 
which came with the election of Lincoln, and 
brought to exultant souls the certainty that the 
encroachments of the slave power had at last 
reached a barrier forever impossible for it to over- 



2 6o MY OWN STORY 

pass. The war of secession was a war of emanci- 
pation from the start. It could not be otherwise, 
whether the actors engaged in it wished it so or 
not ; campaigns and acts of Congress, battles and 
proclamations, victories and defeats, were not so 
much causes or hindrances as eddies of the stream 
in whose mighty movement they were formed and 
swept along. 

I was eager to bear my own humble part in the 
momentous conflict, and took up again the only 
weapon I had any skill to use. I wrote a patriotic 
story, The Drummer Boy ; not especially designed 
as an attack upon slavery, more than any word 
uttered or blow struck for the Union was a word 
or blow aimed at the enemy striving to destroy it. 
But the old heat was fevering me, and no sooner 
was The Drummer Boy hurried on his mission 
than I flung myself upon the writing of as fiery 
an antislavery fiction as I was capable of compass- 
ing. The country had been but slowly awakening 
to a consciousness of the truth that the slave was 
not only to be freed ; he was also to cease to be 
a merely passive occasion of the contest, and to 
become our active ally. Too many calling them- 
selves patriots still opposed emancipation and the 
arming of the blacks, and clung tremblingly to the 
delusion that the Union and slavery might both 
be preserved. The idol-house of the old preju- 



WAR STORIES 261 

dice was shattered, but not demolished. I was 
impatient to hurl my firebrand into the breach. 

II 

In this case I had a title for my novel before a 
page of it was written. Wishing to bring into it 
some incidents of guerrilla warfare and of the 
persecutions of the Union men in the border slave 
States, I cast about for some central fact to give 
unity to the action, and form at the same time a 
picturesque feature of the narrative. The idea of 
a cave somehow suggested itself, and I chose for 
the scene a region where such things exist. As 
no especial economy was required in its construc- 
tion, I thought I might as well have a cavern of 
some magnificence ; or rather, I thought little 
about it, — the whole thing flashed upon me like 
a vision, as I lay awake one night, with my im- 
agination aflame, lighting up that strange world 
under the eyelids so vivid amid the surrounding 
dark. The cave, the burning forest, and the fire- 
lit waterfall, with much of the plan of the drama, 
all came to me, as I recall, in those two or three 
hours of intensely concentrated thought. I 
adopted Cave at once as part of my title, but felt 
that it was necessary to make some felicitous 
addition. I was some time, indeed many nights 
and days, in finding a fit name for my runaway 



262 MY OWN STORY 

slave, who was to inhabit the cavern and help me 
out with my title. Cudjo was finally decided 
upon for him, and Cttdjo's Cave for the book. 
But the hero of it was not Cudjo, although I no 
longer shrank from giving a black man that role. 
Neither was it the young Quaker, turned fighter ; 
Penn Hapgood was only the ostensible hero. The 
real hero, if the story had one, was the proud and 
powerful, full-blooded African, Pomp, whom I 
afterwards carried forward into the third and last 
of my war stories, The Three Scouts. 

Cudjo' s Cave was a partisan book, frankly de- 
signed to fire the Northern heart. This was, per- 
haps, the chief of its many faults. It contained 
scenes of violence such as I should never, under 
other circumstances, have selected as subjects for 
my pen. I adapted, but did not invent them ; 
the most sensational incidents had their counter- 
parts in the reign of wrath and wrong I was 
endeavoring to hold up to the abhorrence of all 
lovers of the Union and haters of slavery and 
secession. The art of the book suffered also 
from the disadvantage I labored under of never 
having visited the region I described, or studied 
the dialect of the people. The result was some- 
thing quite different from what discriminating 
readers have noticed in Neighbor Jackwood, 
where, almost unconsciously to the author, the 



WAR STORIES 263 

dialect became so much a part of the characters 
that no two of them, not even members of the 
same family, are made to talk just alike, but each 
has his or her own persistent peculiarities of 
speech. The fault I speak of lay deeper, how- 
ever, than the dialect. The characters of the 
later novel were portrayed more from without; 
those of the earlier one, from within. But though 
lacking in true emotional depth, the inferior work 
had an external life and an impetuous movement 
which gave it vogue, and enabled it to carry some- 
thing of the political influence it was intended to 
convey. 

Ill 

It was written with great rapidity in the sum- 
mer and autumn of 1863, and published in Decem- 
ber. It was issued by a young and enterprising 
firm that displayed considerable ingenuity and no 
little audacity in advertising it. Pictures of the 
cave were on envelopes and posters, and I remem- 
ber a bookseller's window on Washington Street 
rendered attractive by a pile of the freshly bound 
volumes erected in the similitude of a cave. A 
private letter to the author from Secretary Chase, 
then at the zenith of his fame as a national finan- 
cier, was made to do service in ways he could 
hardly have anticipated any more than I did when 



264 MY OWN STORY 

the publishers obtained permission of him to use 
it. It was printed, and extensively copied by the 
press, and the interior of every street-car in Bos- 
ton was placarded with a signed extract from it, 
outstaring the patient public week after week in a 
manner that would have made the great Secretary 
wince, could he have seen it, as it did me. 

The publishers' methods combined with the 
circumstances of the time to secure immediate 
popularity for the book, — a popularity it still con- 
tinues in a measure to enjoy, having long outlived 
the occasion that called it forth, and the exist- 
ence of the firm that launched it so successfully. 

In a journey through the Southern States at 
the close of the war (as will be related in the suc- 
ceeding chapter) I paid a visit to East Tennessee, 
and was pleased to find that I had not gone far 
wrong in my descriptions of the region where the 
scenes of the story are laid. But I failed to get 
any authentic news of the actors in it, or to dis- 
cover the precise locality of the cave. I have 
lately been told that there is somewhere in the 
vicinity of Cumberland Gap a cave which guides 
and hotel-keepers claim as the original and only 
Cudjo's. I have never seen it. 

Before proceeding to write of the Southern 
tour alluded to, it is necessary to go back in my 
narrative and take up one or two dropped stitches. 



A NEW HOME 265 



IV 



For about eight years I had my residence in 
Boston at No. 1 Seaver Place ; then, in Novem- 
ber, 1858, I went to live on Prospect Hill, in Som- 
erville, in the home of Mr. Alonzo Newton, — a 
sightly abode, with the great green billow of the 
hill (since shorn away) rising beyond, and the 
grass-overgrown ridges of the ancient fortifica- 
tions not more than two or three minutes' walk 
from our door. There Prescott and his compatri- 
ots intrenched themselves after Bunker Hill ; and 
from that natural observatory Washington must 
have pondered the military situation and his coun- 
try's dubious cause, many a summer's day during 
the siege of Boston, and in lonely night hours, 
looking off at the lights of Boston town, and the 
line of rebel camp-fires twinkling here and there, 
from Mystic River near by to far-away Dorches- 
ter Heights. 

The old earthworks were my daily resort, and 
there on the loftiest embankment was for years 
a footpath which my solitary steps had worn and 
kept open, as in all weathers, under sun or moon 
and stars, I paced that quarter-deck of the great 
ship sailing the universal deep. There I fashioned 
my poems or studied my plots (that of Cudjo 
among them), walking to and fro, to and fro, in 



266 MY OWN STORY 

the deepening gloom of evening, amidst a galaxy 
of near and innumerable distant lights ; or by day, 
with many cities and villages outspread before and 
around, the ribbons of two rivers flowing to form 
their large bow just at the harbor's gleaming 
throat ; the more distant sea flashing in the morn- 
ing sun, and the wide horizon undulating to wooded 
crests of dreamy blue. 

To that home I brought my young wife, Cor- 
nelia Warren, of Lowell, early in May, 1 860 ; and 
there we lived, except for absences long or short 
at the mountains or the seaside, and one longer 
sojourn in West Cambridge, until, after a brief 
illness, she died in March, 1864, leaving one child, 
a boy infant six weeks old. Of that four years' 
dream of happiness, and of her whose loveliness 
of character had inspired it, I can say no more in 
this place than that 

" Such things were, 
That were most precious to me." 

The baby boy — who, I will add, inherited 
largely his mother's fairness of features and 
charm of character — fell into such tender hands 
that he never knew the loss he had sustained. 
He was a tie that united me more closely still to 
the Newton family; the mother cherished him 
with a mother's pride and love; and he became 
the special care of the oldest daughter, then a girl 




WINDSOR WARREN TROWBRIDGE 
In his fifth year 



A NEW HOME 267 

of sixteen, who nine years later took the vacant 
place which I had long thought would never again 
be filled, and became his mother indeed. 1 

Meanwhile I acquired the home I now occupy, 
in Arlington (then West Cambridge), and took 
my boy there with the Newton friends in June, 
1865. It is located on one of the pleasantest 
streets in the suburbs of Boston, — a street rightly 
named " Pleasant." Hardly a week passed before 
I had my sail-boat on the lake. Wild woods were 
within five minutes' walk from my dooryard gate. 
So perfect was my contentment in this quiet home 
that I could think of no inducement that would 
take me farther from it than Boston, six or seven 
miles away, for at least a year or two to come. 
Yet I was no more than settled in it, with my 
first flowers blooming and my hens cackling in the 
poultry yard, when I was summoned to set off 
on an adventure full of uncertainty and of doubt- 
ful duration. 

One day early in August I was called upon by a 
Hartford publisher, Mr. L. Stebbins, who had been 
soliciting me, by correspondence, to write a book 
for him, to be " sold only by subscription." The 
devastating Civil War had then recently closed, 
and the subject of the volume was to be a descrip- 

1 Windsor Warren Trowbridge died at Colorado Springs, in 
March, 1884, having just completed his 20th year. 



268 MY OWN STORY 

tion of the principal battle-fields and the condition 
of the States lately in rebellion. Mr. Stebbins 
had first proposed the work to Bayard Taylor, 
whose engagements would not permit him to un- 
dertake it, but who said to him, with an emphasis 
that seemed to have been convincing, that I was 
the man for it. So Mr. Stebbins had come from 
Hartford to see me, not at all disturbed by my 
having declined his proposal by letter, and think- 
ing, as he said, that "a personal interview might 
be useful." 

"It won't be useful at all, Mr. Stebbins," I 
made answer. " I have been only two months in 
my new home here, and I would n't leave it to 
make a rough journey through the Southern 
States, at this time of year, for any inducement 
you can hold out." 

" It is a favorable season for the trip," he re- 
plied. " You will go first to Gettysburg, Cham- 
bersburg, Harper's Ferry, Washington, and so 'on 
to Richmond ; ' and by that time it will be cool 
weather." 

To my further objection that I was writing for 
Ticknor & Fields' magazines, and was bound to 
furnish an article every month for one of them, 
he replied, — 

" You can arrange that ; and I see no reason 
why you should n't print in them a few chapters, 



A NEW HOME 269 

as you prepare them for the book, — say five or 
six ; they might help to advertise it." 

This was a weighty argument. Still I de- 
murred, laying stress upon the great number of 
books about the South that were sure to be writ- 
ten and published during the coming year, and on 
the risk of such an undertaking. 

" There will be no risk to you, as far as money 
matters are concerned," he answered with quiet 
promptness. "All your expenses will be paid, 
and I think I can make the remuneration satis- 
factory." 

I asked what he meant by satisfactory ; and he 
named a sum that interested me. In buying my 
new home I had left a mortgage on the place 
which I expected to be two or three years in pay- 
ing off ; and here was an opportunity of lifting 
the incumbrance by a few months' hard work, 
and of adding, besides, a goodly sum to my bank 
account. The journey through parts of the deso- 
lated South, where society was still in a chaotic 
state, would undoubtedly be attended by hard- 
ships, discomforts, and some danger. But it would 
afford an opportunity of seeing those States in 
that tremendous crisis of their history, in the 
paroxysm intervening between the periods of sub- 
jugation and emancipation and of hardly yet at- 
tempted reconstruction. The pecuniary consider- 



270 MY OWN STORY 

ation justified the trip, and I saw advantages in it, 
against which no allurements of home and peace- 
ful pursuits, or other sentimental reasons, should 
be allowed to have weight. 

I proposed some modification of the terms 
offered, to which Mr. Stebbins cheerfully ac- 
ceded. I conferred with Mr. Fields, as to contri- 
butions to the two magazines during my absence ; 
and within a week's time from my interview with 
Mr. Stebbins started off on my journey with a light 
heart and no incumbrance but a traveling shawl 
and a stout valise. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 



I proceeded as directly as possible to Gettys- 
burg, where I spent several days studying the 
battle-field, gathering anecdotes of that great and 
decisive conflict, and writing out my observations. 
From there I went to Chambersburg, which the 
rebel invaders had burnt ; then by the way of 
South Mountain and Antietam to Harper's Ferry, 
the place of John Brown's sanguinary last fight 
and capture; and thence to Charlestown, the 
scene of his hurried trial and execution. 

I looked in vain for any traces of those clos- 
ing events in the brave but visionary old man's 
life. The jail in which he was confined had been 
burned to the ground. The court house was a 
melancholy ruin, abandoned to rats and toads; 
four massy white brick pillars, still standing, sup- 
ported a riddled roof, through which the tranquil 
sky and gracious sunshine smiled. Names of 
Union soldiers were scrawled along the walls. 
The work of destruction had been performed by 



272 MY OWN STORY 

the hands of those hilarious boys in blue to the 
tune of " John Brown " — the swelling melody of 
the song and the accompaniment of crashing tim- 
bers reminding the citizens, who thought to have 
destroyed the old hero, that his " soul was march- 
ing on." 

I asked a bright young colored girl to point out 
the spot where John Brown's gallows stood. She 
led across barren fields outside the town, and 
into a wilderness of flowering and seeding weeds, 
waist high to her as she tramped on, parting them 
before her with her hands. 

" Here is about where it was," she said, stop- 
ping in the midst of the desolation. " Nobody 
knows now just where the gallows stood. There 
was a tree here, but that has been cut down and 
carried away, stump and roots and all, by folks that 
wanted something to remember John Brown by." 

I stood a long time on the spot, amid the grace- 
fully drooping golden-rods, and looked at the same 
sky old John Brown looked his last on, the same 
groves, and the distant Blue Ridge, the sight of 
whose cerulean summits, clad in softest heavenly 
light, must have conveyed a sweet assurance to his 
soul. 

The jail in ashes, the court house in ruins, and 
a neighboring church that was turned into a stable 
by Union troopers and had not yet been cleansed 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 273 

of the abomination, were, on a small scale and in a 
mild way, typical of the devastation I was to wit- 
ness throughout my Southern journey, wherever 
the harrow of war had left its trace. 

II 

About the last of August I reached Washing- 
ton, where I remained ten or twelve days, writing 
out my notes, gathering material for new ones, 
and seeing old friends and new acquaintances. 
Whitelaw Reid, who had lately accompanied 
Chief Justice Chase in his coastwise Southern 
tour on a United States revenue cutter, and was 
then preparing his book, After the War, went 
with me over the Bull Run battle-fields, and gave 
me from his own experience valuable hints as to 
what was before me. To one-armed General O. O. 
Howard, a brave man and true, I was indebted 
for much useful information, a general letter of 
introduction to military heads of departments, and 
this cheerful bit of advice as to the guerrillas and 
Yankee-haters I might meet : " Let them kill you 
if they want to ! " 

Chief Justice Chase (my old friend, of whom I 
shall have much to say in another place), fresh 
from his own Southern tour, expressed great in- 
terest in my trip, and saying, "Excuse me a 
moment," turned to write a letter at his desk. 



274 MY OWN STORY 

He handed it to me unsealed, with the remark, 
" Perhaps this may be of some use to you." It 
was a general letter of introduction, cordially com- 
mending me " to all with whom his opinion might 
have weight." It proved of very great use to me 
indeed. 

General Garfield I met on the street quite un- 
expectedly, not knowing that he was then in Wash- 
ington. Tall, well-proportioned, broad-minded, ur- 
bane, how well I remember him and his hearty 
handshake as, having heard whither I was bound, 
he bade me good-speed on my mission ! This was 
the last time I ever spoke with him, although I 
afterwards saw him on two or three occasions on 
the floor of Congress. Not many of his friends 
then imagined that he had before him, in a not 
very remote future, the great goal of the Presi- 
dency, which he was to reach only to be hurled 
from that height by a petty assassin's mad act. 

Ill 

A breezy trip of three hours by steamer down 
the Potomac, from Washington, brought me to 
Acquia Creek, and I was at once in the track of 
our armies in the famous " on-to-Richmond " 
campaigns. 

Fredericksburg, which I reached that afternoon, 
was still half in ruins, with broken walls, and soli- 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 275 

tary chimney stacks standing like grim sentinels 
over foundations overgrown with weeds and this- 
tles. I rode into the city on the top of a coach 
beside a vivacious expressman, who was carrying 
in his tin box fifty pardons from President John- 
son to prominent Virginia rebels. In talking with 
him I for the first time in my life realized fully 
what " State pride " was. To hear him pronounce 
the word V-i-r-g-i-n-ia, dwelling with rich into- 
nations on the luscious vowels and consonants, 
was as good as eating a peach. " I believe my 
State is worth all the rest of the Union," he ex- 
claimed, with excited countenance, lip curled, and 
eye in a fine frenzy. He had been opposed to 
secession, but State pride had carried him with 
her into the war. 

In singular contrast with him was a sturdy old 
man whom I met in Fredericksburg. Pointing 
out the havoc made by Burnside's shells, he ex- 
claimed bitterly, — 

" You see the result of the vanity of Virginia ! " 

I asked him if he was a Virginian. " I am ; but 
that is no reason why I should be blind to the 
faults of my State." 

" You were not much in favor of secession ? " 
I suggested. 

" In favor of it ! " he exclaimed, kindling. 
"Didn't they have me in jail here nine weeks 



276 MY OWN STORY 

because I would n't vote for it ? Now look at 
this ruined city ! the farms and plantations laid 
waste ! the rich reduced to poverty, young men 
and boys with one leg, one arm, or one hand ! 
the broken families, the tens of thousands of 
graves ! It is all the result of vanity ! vanity ! " 
which seemed but another name for "State 
pride." 

To these samples of the endless variety of char- 
acters and conversations I was to meet and make 
note of on my tour through Secessia, I will add 
one more here. From Fredericksburg I was 
driven out to the field of Spottsylvania by a plea- 
sant-featured young fellow, who, like many of the 
young men, white and black, I had seen in that 
region, wore United States Army trousers. 

" Dar was right smart o' trad'n' done in Yankee 
clo'es, last years of de war," he explained. 

I asked, " Did you rob a dead soldier of those 
you have on ? " 

" No ; I bought dese in Fredericksburg. I 
never robbed a dead man." When I suggested that 
they might have been taken from a dead soldier 
by some one else, he replied stoically, " Mought 
be ; but it could n't be ho'ped " (helped). " A 
po' man can't be choice." 

He used "de " for " the " almost invariably, with 
many other expressions that betrayed early asso- 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 277 

ciation with negroes. He told me his name was 
Richard H. Hicks. 

I asked, " What is your middle name ? " 

" I hain't got no middle name." 

" What does the < H.' stand for ? " 

" < H.' stands for Hicks ; Richard H. Hicks ; 
dat's what dey tell me." He could n't read ; had 
never been to school ; " never had no chance to 
learn." 

This confession somehow touched me with a 
sadness I had not felt even at the sight of un- 
buried or half-buried dead men in the woods. 
Young, active, naturally intelligent, he was himself 
dead to a world without which this would seem to 
us a blank, the world of literature. I thought of 
Shakespeare, David, the prophets, the poets, the 
historians and romancers, and as my mind glanced 
from name to name on the glittering entablatures, 
I seemed to be standing in a glorious temple with 
a blind youth by my side. I asked if he had ever 
heard of Walter Scott. 

" No, I never heard of dat Scott ; but I know a 
William Scott." 

" Or of a great English poet called Lord 
Byron ? " 

" No ; I never knowed dar was such a man." 

What a gulf betwixt his mind and mine ! Sit- 
ting side by side on the buggy seat, we were as 



278 MY OWN STORY 

far asunder as the great globe's poles. He was 
a common product of Southern institutions, such 
as in rural New York or New England it would be 
impossible to find. 

IV 

On the fields of Spottsylvania, Chancellorsville, 
and the Wilderness, — if they could be called 
fields, which were largely overgrown with scrub 
oaks and dwarfish pines and cedars, — I came 
upon evidences of the most terrible fighting which 
the four years' conflict had witnessed ; for this was 
the sanguinary course of which Grant had declared, 
" I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
all summer." I passed whole thickets that had 
been killed by the horizontal leaden hail and left 
standing like fields of huddled bean poles ; groves 
of larger trees, cut entirely off by bullets, the 
stubs remaining like enormous scrub-brooms 
pointing towards heaven ; planks from the plank- 
roads piled up and lashed against trees, to form a 
shelter for pickets ; a woman and a child, with 
knapsack and pail, stolidly picking up bullets, as 
if they had been gathering chincapins, as I at first 
thought they were ; knapsacks and haversacks, in 
heaps or scattered ; pieces of rotted clothing, frag- 
ments of harness, tin plates and canteens (some 
pierced with balls) ; rusted fragments of shells, 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 279 

with here and there a round shot or a shell unex- 
ploded ; straps, buckles, cartridge-boxes, old shoes ; 
and, ghastlier than all else, now and then a stray- 
skull or an entire skeleton, which the burying 
parties had overlooked in out-of-the-way places ; 
or the hideous half -resurrection of the dead that 
had been laid in graves too shallow, where the 
rain -washed soil exposed a breast bone, a grinning 
jaw, or fleshless toes sticking out. 

I sometimes found old letters strewing the 
ground, often torn and half-decayed, and with 
the characters faded and blurred by fierce suns 
and drenching storms. And beside one of Grant's 
intrenchments I picked up the mildewed fragment 
of a German pocket Testament. Strangely enough, 
in this Gehenna of human sacrifice and innumer- 
able unknown graves, these were the words that 
caught my eye, on the hardly legible leaf : — 

" Die du mir gegeben hast, die habe ich bewahret, 
und ist keiner von ihnen verloren." 

" Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and 
none of them is lost." 



On the fifteenth of September I took the train 
at Fredericksburg for Richmond, and covered in 
three hours the space which our troops were more 
than as many years in fighting their way over. 



280 MY OWN STORY 

It was with strange emotions that I entered 
the city which the storm of war had still left beau- 
tiful, although she seemed to be mourning for her 
sins in dust and ashes, — dust which every wind 
whirled up from the unwatered streets, and the 
ashes of the Burnt District. 

I was rather homesick at first, in a hotel that 
afforded me very poor accommodations ; but this I 
soon exchanged for one fronting on Capitol Square, 
and was happy when, throwing open the shutters 
of the room assigned me, I looked out on the 
park, the State Capitol (which had also been the 
Capitol of the Confederacy), Crawford's colossal 
equestrian statue of Washington soaring amid the 
trees, and the far-off, shining James. I could 
always be happy anywhere with a quiet room for 
study and seclusion, and a fair outlook. 

I carried letters of introduction to Governor 
Pierpont, executive under the new regime, and his 
private secretary, General Strother, author and 
artist, who, over the pseudonym of " Porte 
Crayon," illustrated his own magazine articles ; to 
General Terry, commander of the military depart- 
ment, and his chief of staff, General J. R. Hawley, 
now Senator Hawley of Connecticut ; to the as- 
sistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, 
and to others who had assimilated a vast deal of 
information about the anomalous conditions I had 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 281 

come to study, and who were obligingly ready to 
impart it. Generals Terry and Hawley treated 
me with the utmost kindness, furnishing me with 
an army horse, and one of the staff for a guide, 
for trips which I could not well make on foot or 
on wheels. My boyish habit of horseback exer- 
cise on the farm, or riding for cattle or game on 
the prairies of Illinois, had quickly come back, and 
I was to find it exceedingly useful during my 
Southern tour. 

On a corner opposite my hotel, with a spire 
clean as a stiletto, was St. Paul's Church, where 
President Jefferson Davis heard the gospel 
preached from the slave-owner's point of view; 
and where he sat in his pew on that memorable 
Sunday morning, when Lee's dispatch was handed 
to him, announcing that Richmond was lost. Not 
very far away was St. John's Church, whose 
ancient walls reechoed Patrick Henry's renowned 
speech, since spouted by schoolboys, — " Give 
me liberty or give me death ! " — two widely con- 
trasted scenes, affording food for reflection. 

I paid an early visit to the halls of the late Con- 
federate Congress, in the State Capitol ; where it 
was my fortune to set on foot a movement plea- 
sant to remember. I found the halls a scene of 
dust and confusion ; the desks and seats had been 
ripped up, and workmen were engaged in sweeping 



282 MY OWN STORY 

out the last vestiges of Confederate rule. The 
furniture had gone to an auction room, to be sold 
under the hammer ; I reported the fact to a mem- 
ber of the American Union Commission (supported 
by Northern benevolence), who was looking for 
furniture to be used in the freedmen's schools, and 
he made haste to bid in the relics. I could fancy 
no finer stroke of poetical justice than the con- 
version of the seats on which sat the legislators of 
the great slave empire, and the desks on which 
they wrote, into seats and desks for negro children 
and adults learning to read. 

VI 

Among the many interesting or astonishing 
sights awaiting me, in and around Richmond, I 
must mention one, the like of which I was often 
to witness throughout the devastated South. This 
was the issuing of what were called "destitute 
rations " by the United States Commissary, to 
hungry-looking, haggard crowds, — sickly faced 
women, jaundiced old men, and children in rags ; 
with here and there a seedy gentleman who had 
seen better days, or a stately female in faded ap- 
parel, which, like her refined manners, betrayed the 
aristocratic lady whom war and emancipation had 
reduced to want. Colored people were not per- 
mitted to draw rations for themselves at the same 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 283 

place with the whites ; but there were among these 
a good many colored servants " drawing " for their 
mistresses, who remained at home, too ill or too 
proud to come in person and present the tickets 
issued to them by the Relief Commission. 

At the place where " destitute rations " were 
issued for the blacks, business appeared dull ; a 
surprising circumstance considering that the 
colored population then crowded into Richmond 
about equaled the white population. In the book 
I was preparing I endeavored to trace the reasons 
for this discrepancy ; which I pass over here, hav- 
ing mentioned the subject at all, merely to draw 
attention to the policy of our government, unprece- 
dented in the world's history, of following its victo- 
rious armies with stores to feed a conquered pro- 
vince and with express-boxes full of pardons for its 
enemies. Great stress, not unjustly, has been laid 
upon the corruption of the carpet-bag governments 
that undertook, in the interests of Federal Union 
and of the enfranchised blacks, the reconstruction 
of the States that had been in rebellion. Corrupt 
enough they in many cases were, without question. 
But the wrongs committed by them were as passing 
shadows in the splendor of the magnanimity shown 
to a vanquished foe. 

In Virginia, as in other parts of the South, I 
found those who had been in the Confederate ranks 



284 MY OWN STORY 

generally the most ready to resume their loyalty 
to the flag they had fought against. The Seces- 
sionists who had kept out of the war were the most 
persistent and the most violent in their hatred of the 
restored Union. The female Secessionists were 
bitterest of all. They would yield nothing even to 
the logic of events. To appeal to their reason was 
idle ; but they were vulnerable on the side of the 
sentiments ; and many a fair one was converted 
from the heresy of state rights by some handsome 
Federal officer, who judiciously mingled love with 
loyalty in his addresses, and pleaded for the union 
of hands as well as the union of States. 

VII 

From Fortress Monroe, as I stated in my 
narrative, I was called home by an affair of busi- 
ness requiring my attention. That affair, I may 
explain here, was the putting through the press 
of a hundred pages or more of my forthcoming 
book, to form a " dummy " of sample chapters and 
contents, for the use of agents in soliciting sub- 
scriptions. 

The return home at that time was extremely 
fortunate, for I had already received into my sys- 
tem seeds of a distemper, which developed into a 
severe and prolonged siege of bilious fever, — the 
first serious illness to which my constitution had 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 285 

ever succumbed. I could never believe that this 
was caused by overwork or change of climate and 
diet ; for the life agreed with me, and I grew ro- 
bust and bronzed, until the first insidious symp- 
toms appeared, brought on by the "wulgar error" 
(as an admirer of Sam Weller suggested) of not 
putting enough whiskey in my water, during the 
warm September days I passed in Richmond, 
when I was possessed by an abnormal thirst. 
The distressing sickness, of a month's duration, 
I could have borne with equanimity but for my 
impatience to get back to my work, and my anxi- 
ety on account of the publisher, who had so large 
a risk in my ability to carry it to completion. 
But in this crisis, as in all my relations with him, 
he was courageous and generous to the last de- 
gree. He expressed himself as highly satisfied 
with what I had done thus far, begged me not to 
exert myself until I was fully recovered, and pro- 
ceeded to prepare the "dummy" for his canvas- 
sers, who, all the following winter and spring, 
would be selling the book while I was completing 

it. 

VIII 

I resumed my Southern tour in December, pass- 
ing through central and southwest Virginia into 
East Tennessee, where I was curious to observe 
the country and people I had attempted to depict 



286 MY OWN STORY 

in Cudjo's Cave ; and where I beheld so much 
that was dishearteningly prosaic and chilling to 
the imagination that I deemed myself fortunate 
in not having visited the scene before choosing it 
for the incidents and characters of my story. 

A few farmers had comfortable-looking painted 
or brick houses; while scattered everywhere 
over the valleys and mountain slopes were poverty- 
stricken, weather-blackened little framed dwell- 
ings and log huts. Many of these were without 
windows, the inmates — as the custom was 
through a large part of the South — living by the 
daylight let in through open doors and the fire- 
light from great wide chimneys. The villages 
were without sidewalks or paved streets. In 
Greenville I saw President Johnson's Tennessee 
home, a plain brick dwelling, with mud almost up 
to the front door. 

The fires of the old war-time feuds were still 
burning. Secessionists who had assisted in the 
hanging and robbing of Union men were in jail or 
in exile. I saw later one of these fugitives who 
told me how homesickly he pined for the hills and 
dales of East Tennessee, which he thought the 
most delightful country in the world. But there 
was a rope " hanging from a tree for him there," 
and he could n't go back. 

A Union man, whom I met on the abutment of 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 287 

a burned railroad bridge at Strawberry Plain, was 
telling me about the rebel operations at that 
place, when a fine fellow came dashing into the 
village on horseback. 

"There's a dog-goned rebel now!" said my 
man, eyeing him with baleful glances. " He 's a 
rebel colonel just come back. He '11 get warned ; 
and then if he don't leave, he must look out ! " 

It was useless to preach forgiveness and good 
will to men still burning with the memory of their 
wrongs. 

The rebel spirit was still rampant in places 
where personal protection was afforded by the 
power it had lately fought. At the table of the 
Bell House, in Knoxville, a diner who sat near 
me called out to one of the waiters, a good-look- 
ing colored man, — " Here, boy ! " 

" My name is Dick," said the " boy," respect- 
fully. 

" You '11 answer to the name I call you, or I '11 
blow a hole through you ! " swore the gentleman. 
He proceeded, addressing the company, "Last 
week, in Chattanooga, I said to a nigger I found 
at the railroad, 'Here, Buck, show me the bag- 
gage-room.' He said, < My name ain't Buck.' I 
just put my six-shooter to his head, and, by God ! 
he did n't stop to think what his name was, but 
showed me what I wanted." 



288 MY OWN STORY 

My pleasantest recollection of Chattanooga is 
the ascent of Lookout Mountain, from that place, 
on an army horse provided for me by General 
Gillem, who was in command there, and who gave 
me his orderly for an attendant. The orderly was 
an intelligent quadroon, who had been Grant's body 
servant in the early days of the war. He had much 
to say of the famous chief, whom he described as 
quiet, kind, a great smoker, very silent, and never 
excited ; "a heavy sleeper and a heavy drinker." 

" There was only one time when he appeared 
troubled in his mind ; that was after the battle of 
Shiloh. About that time he seemed to wake up 
to the notion that he 'd got a big job to do ; for he 
suddenly left off drink, and I never saw him take 
any whiskey after that." 

Of Lookout Mountain, the scene of "fighting 
Joe Hooker's " famous " battle in the clouds," 
and of the incomparable view from the summit, 
with cloud shadows chasing each other over hazy 
ranges and misty vales, as far away as the eye 
could see, and with the long, bright, crooked Ten- 
nessee curving in to the very base of the mighty 
crags on which we stood, — of all this, and of other 
things that made that day golden in my memory, 
I can give here only a glimpse, or less than a 
glimpse, in passing. 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 289 

IX 

My visit to Nashville chanced on the first anni- 
versary of the battle which took place there, under 
the eyes of the citizens, on the fifteenth and six- 
teenth days of December, 1864, when Hood's army 
was annihilated, and a period put to rebel rule in 
the States Sherman had left behind him in his 
great " march to the sea." 

The wife of a noted general officer who was in 
the thickest of the fight told me something of her 
experience, watching from the Capitol with a glass 
the movements of his troops, — the swift gallop of 
couriers, the charge, the repulse, the successful 
assault, the ground dotted with the slain, and the 
awful battle-cloud rolling over all, enfolding, as she 
at one time believed, his dead form with the rest. 
But he lived, and was present when she told me 
the story. The battle was no such fearful thing 
to the brave soldier in the midst of it as to the 
loving wife looking on. 

At Nashville I saw Governor Brownlow, better 
known as "Parson Brownlow," whose published 
sayings, spiced by quaintness and wit, had given 
him a national reputation, remembered now by few. 
He was especially interesting to me as an out- 
spoken convert from the proslavery doctrines he 
formerly advocated to the radical ideas which the 



2 9 o MY OWN STORY 

agitations of the time had shaken to the surface 
of society. His elevation to the high office of 
governor of the State had not tended to modify 
his style of conversation. He believed a rebel had 
no rights except to be " hung in this world and 
damned in the next." But this and similar expres- 
sions did not proceed so much from a vindictive 
nature as from a tendency to strong, extravagant 
statement, common in the West and South. 

From the governor's I went over to the division 
headquarters to call on Major-General Thomas, — 
a very different type of native Southern man. 
Born and bred in Virginia, his patriotism was 
national, knowing no state boundaries. In ap- 
pearance, he was the most lion-like of all the 
Union generals it was my good fortune to meet. 
Beside that magnificent live oak of a man, Gov- 
ernor Brownlow was a poplar, with sensitive leaves 
rustling in every wind. An imperturbable, strong 
character, never betrayed into excess by any excite- 
ment, the general's opinions, which he imparted 
freely, possessed great interest and value for me 

and my book. 

X 

On the trip by train from Nashville to Corinth 
I made acquaintance with a manly young South- 
erner, whose character enlisted my sympathy, and 
whose conversation I condense here, as a sample 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 291 

of the hundreds of such with which my notebooks 
overflowed. 

" We have lost our property, and we have been 
subjugated, but we brought it all on ourselves. 
Nobody that has n't experienced it knows anything 
about our suffering. I never did a day's work in 
my life, and don't know how to begin." 

Speaking of the negroes : " We can't feel to- 
wards them as you do ; I suppose we ought to, 
but it is n't possible. They 've always been our 
owned servants ; we 've been used to having them 
mind us without a word of objection, and we can't 
bear anything else from them now. I was always 
kind to my slaves. I never whipped but two boys 
in my life, and one of them I whipped three weeks 
ago." 

" When he was a free man ? " I said. 

" Yes ; for I tell you that makes no difference 
in our feeling towards them. I sent him across 
the country for some goods. He came back with 
half the goods he ought to have got for the money. 
I may as well be frank, — it was a gallon of whis- 
key. There were five gentlemen at the house, 
and I wanted the whiskey for them. I told Bob he 
stole it. Afterwards he came into the room and 
stood by the door, — a big, strong fellow, twenty- 
three years old. I said, ' Bob, what do you want ? ' 
He said, 'I want satisfaction about the whiskey.' 



2 9 2 MY OWN STORY 

He told me afterwards, he meant that he was n't sat- 
isfied I should think that he had stolen it, and he 
wanted to come to a good understanding about it. 
But I thought he wanted satisfaction gentlemen's 
fashion. I rushed for my gun. I 'd have shot him 
dead on the spot if my friends had n't held me. 
They said I 'd best not kill him, but that he ought 
to be whipped. I sent to the stable for a trace, 
and gave him a bull-dose with it, hard as I could 
lay on." 

I asked if Bob made no resistance. " Oh, he 
knew better than that ! my friends stood by to 
see me through. I was wrong, I know, but I was 
in a passion." 

I said, " According to your own showing, some 
restraint seems to be necessary to you, and some 
protection for the negroes ; on the whole, the 
Freedmen's Bureau is a good thing, is n't it ? " 

He smiled : " Maybe it is ; yes, if the nigger is 
to be free, I reckon it is ; but it 's a mighty bitter 
thing for us ! " 

XI 

I have purposed keeping the Freedmen's Bureau 
and Freedmen's Schools as much as possible out of 
these reminiscences. But I cannot forbear recall- 
ing here a few observations made at that time, at 
Memphis and elsewhere, so little is now known 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 293 

or remembered of what were then matters of such 
tremendous import. 

The codes of the slave States prohibiting the 
teaching of the simplest rudiments of learning to 
the subject race, and denying to it the privileges 
of citizenship, had been rendered incongruous and 
obsolete by emancipation. The former kindly rela- 
tions generally existing between masters and ser- 
vants, as long as the servants humbly kept their 
place, had been violently disturbed or disrupted 
altogether; while the old prejudice against color, 
or any taint of it, had been intensified to a sort of 
mania in the dominant class by the freedmen's 
assumption of freedmen's rights. That this as- 
sumption was often insolent, and that many of 
the emancipated believed that their new-found 
liberty meant an endless orgy of idleness and in- 
dulgence, cannot be gainsaid. It would have been 
surprising had it been otherwise. But the real 
wonder was that such vast numbers of the suddenly 
disenthralled should have remained peaceable, pa- 
tient, waiting for the promised deliverance that 
did not come, and in the mean while willing to 
work, even when work was offered them on worse 
than the old slave-driver's terms. 

In that bewildering crisis the late masters were 
hardly more capable than the blacks of grasping 
the significance of events, or of appreciating their 



294 MY OWN STORY 

new duties and opportunities. If they had under- 
stood the situation, and had had the wisdom and 
courage to lay aside their prejudices and take 
the leadership that belonged to them, in reestab- 
lishing the ruptured relations on grounds of hu- 
manity and justice, there would have been little 
need of such an instrument of the government as 
the Freedmen's Bureau, and the portentous race- 
problem would have been nearer its natural solu- 
tion than it has been at any time since that instru- 
ment was withdrawn. To say that such a course 
was not possible for them is not to impute to 
them any blame, but to state a simple fact. 

The Bureau's function was to protect the freed- 
men and readjust their relations to the superior 
race. It regulated labor contracts, and saw that 
they were properly observed by employers and 
employed. Its courts were designed to adjudi- 
cate in cases that could not be safely intrusted 
to the civil courts. I watched carefully scores 
of cases decided by these tribunals, in different 
places, and do not remember one in which sub- 
stantial justice was not done. No doubt excep- 
tions occurred, but I do not believe they were 
more frequent than those which occur in common- 
law courts ; and they were insignificant compared 
with the wholesale wrong to which the unpro- 
tected freedman would have been subjected in 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 295 

communities where old slave codes and immemo- 
rial custom denied to him the "inalienable rights" 
of man. I have read in recent fiction, by writers 
whose memory does not go back so far as mine, 
farcical descriptions of acts attributed to agents 
of the Bureau, which, from my own observation in 
all the States I visited, I unhesitatingly pronounce 
exceptional, and the outgrowth of a later time, or 
absurdly exaggerated and impossible. 

A great variety of business was brought before 
the Bureau. A negro man came to advertise a 
reward of fifty dollars for information that would 
help him find his wife and children, sold away 
from him in times of slavery. A white woman, 
who had been warned by the police that she must 
not live with her husband because he was black, 
claimed protection in her marriage relation, bring- 
ing proof that she was in reality " colored." A 
boy, formerly a slave, to whom his father, a free- 
man, willed some money, loaned it to his owner, 
who gave his note for it, but would never repay 
it, and now the boy came, pulling the worn and 
soiled bit of paper from his pocket, as proof of his 
claim for principal and interest. Such document- 
ary evidence, long kept concealed, was serving to 
right many a wrong. I once saw a large package 
of wills, made in favor of slaves, usually by their 
white fathers, all of which had been suppressed 



296 MY OWN STORY 

by the legitimate heirs. One, a mere rag, scarcely 
legible, had been carried sewed in the lining of a 
slave- woman's dress for more than forty years, the 
date of the will being 1823. By that instrument 
her son was legally emancipated ; but her owner, 
who claimed to be the boy's owner by inheritance, 
threatened to kill her if the will was not de- 
stroyed, and he believed that it had been destroyed. 
That boy was now a middle-aged man, having 
passed the flower of his years in bondage ; and 
his mother was an old woman, living to thank God 
that her son was free. The master, a rich man, 
had as yet no idea of the existence of that will, by 
which he might be held responsible for the pay- 
ment of over forty years' wages to his unlawful 

bondman. 

XII 

Proceeding from Memphis by steamboat, down 
the Mississippi, on the afternoon of the third day 
I sighted Vicksburg, situated on a high bluff, with 
the sunlight on its hills and roofs and fortifica- 
tions ; golden fair in the enchantment distance 
lends. 

The town was still rude with the scars left by 
the famous siege. It sloped up rapidly from the 
landing, on hills cut through by streets, which 
afforded the inhabitants excellent facilities for 
burrowing during the investment. The base of 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 297 

the hills and the yellow, cliff-like banks of the 
excavated ways appeared completely honeycombed 
with caves, which still remained, a source of as- 
tonishment to the stranger, who could easily fancy 
them the abodes of a colony of prodigious bank- 
swallows. 

Many of the caves were mere " gopher-holes," 
as the soldiers called them. Others were quite 
spacious. The entrance was usually large enough 
to admit a person stooping slightly ; but, within, 
the roofs of the retreats were hollowed sufficiently 
to allow a man to stand upright. Each family 
had its cave. 

Not many houses were destroyed by the bom- 
bardment. When it was hottest, it was estimated 
that six thousand shells were thrown into the city 
by the riverside mortars every twenty-four hours, 
— stupendous and amazing fireworks, if the cliff- 
dwellers peeped out of their holes to observe ! 
Grant's siege guns, in the rear of the bluffs, 
dropped daily four thousand more along the rebel 
lines. It seemed incredible that so small an 
amount of damage should have been done by so 
prodigious and prolonged a cannonade. The sol- 
diers too had their " gopher-holes," and laughed 
at the howling and exploding projectiles. Of the 
women and children in the town, only three were 
killed and twelve injured. The besieged were 



298 MY OWN STORY 

cut off from supplies, and both citizens and sol- 
diers suffered more from the scarcity of provisions 
than from the falling thunderbolts. 

Like all the army officers to whom I was ac- 
credited, Major-General Wood, in command of 
the military department of Mississippi, extended 
to me every possible courtesy and kindness, and 
gave me letters to other commanders of depart- 
ments I was still to visit. I passed memorable 
hours with him at his headquarters, or riding by 
his side around the fortifications below Vicksburg, 
inspecting redans and rifle pits, approaches and 
defences. 

One day I joined a small equestrian party of 
ladies and gentlemen, got up by one of his lieu- 
tenants for my benefit, and rode to various points 
of interest ; taking in Fort Hill, in the " crater " 
of which, after the Confederate bastions had been 
mined and blown up, occurred one of the most 
desperate combats that marked the siege ; and a 
little way down the slope, the spot rendered his- 
toric by the interview that terminated the long 
struggle for the key to the Mississippi. There, 
in full view of the confronting armies, the two 
commanding generals met under an oak-tree, and 
had their little talk. 

" Where is the tree ? " I inquired. 

Like the tree near which John Brown's gallows 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 299 

stood, it had long since disappeared, root and 
trunk and branch, cut up, broken up, dug up, dis- 
severed and scattered all over the country in the 
form of relics. 

The monument near by, a neat granite shaft 
raised to commemorate the surrender, seemed 
likely to have a similar fate. It bore the simple 
inscription, " Site of Interview between Major- 
General Grant and Lieutenant-General Pember- 
ton, July 4, 1863 ;" and it was surrounded by an 
iron fence. The shaft had been shamefully mu- 
tilated, and the fence broken down. I wonder if 
the obliterated eagle and shield of the escutcheon 
have been restored, and how much of the monu- 
ment exists to-day ? 

XIII 

The Quitman, in which I took passage for 
New Orleans, — one of the finest of the large 
Mississippi packets, — treated her patrons sump- 
tuously ; furnishing, as I remember, an excellent 
quality of claret as a part of the regular dinner 
fare, a bottle flanking each plate, after the French 
fashion, which appeared to have been introduced 
into Louisiana by the Creoles, and which I sup- 
posed was to be found nowhere else in this coun- 
try, until I met with it afterwards in some part of 
California. 



3 oo MY OWN STORY 

The river trips gave a delightful variety to my 
journey ; they also afforded abundant opportuni- 
ties for studying political and social conditions in 
the characters and conversations of the passen- 
gers, and for observing some of the old slave- 
drivers' methods of working the blacks. The 
Quitman had sixty deck hands, all colored ; 
and the way they were hustled and hurried and 
cursed impressed itself on my memory, by the 
very pity of it. We were nearly all night at 
Natchez loading cotton ; and the next day I no- 
ticed that the mate yelled himself unusually 
hoarse in getting his freight on and off. I took 
occasion to talk with him about the deck hands. 
He said, — 

" These men are used up. They hain't had no 
sleep for four days and nights. I 've seen a man 
go to sleep many a time, standing up, and tumble 
over, with a box on his shoulder. We pay more 
wages than almost any other boat, the work is 
so hard. But we get rid of paying a heap of 'em. 
When a man gets so used up he can't stand no 
more, he quits ; and he don't dare to ask for 
wages, for he knows he '11 get none, without he 
sticks by to the end of the trip." 

While we were talking a young fellow came up, 
looking much exhausted, and told the mate he 
was sick. 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 301 

" You ain't sick, neither ! " the mate roared at 
him. " You 're lazy. If you won't work, go 
ashore." 

The young fellow limped ashore at the next 
landing. 

" Is he sick, or lazy ? " I asked. 

"Neither," said the mate. "He's used up. 
He was as smart a man as we had when he come 
aboard. The men can't stand it. Not one of 
these will ship' for another trip ; they 've had 
enough of it. There 's no compellin' 'em. You 
can't hit a nigger now but these damned Yankee 
sons of Satan have you up and make you pay for 
it. I like a nigger in his place, and that 's a ser- 
vant, if there 's any truth in the Bible." There 
was something grimly incongruous in such allu- 
sions to Scripture, on lips hot with wrath and 
wrong. 

The levees grew higher and higher as we 
steamed on, a large and fertile part of Louisiana 
lying below the level of only moderately high 
water ; we passed bends and bayous, and forests 
of cypress-trees growing out of the swamps, heavy, 
sombre, and shaggy with long trailing moss ; and 
on the first day of January, 1866, arrived at the 
Crescent City. 



3 o2 MY OWN STORY 

XIV 

It was midwinter ; but the mild, sunny weather 
made me fancy it was the month of May. The 
gardens of the city were verdant with tropical 
plants. Roses in full bloom climbed upon trel- 
lises or the verandas of houses ; oleander-trees, 
bananas with their broad, drooping leaves six feet 
long, and Japan plum-trees, bearing plums that 
would ripen in February, grew side by side in the 
open air. There were orange-trees whose golden 
fruit could be plucked from the balconies they 
half concealed. Magnolias, gray-oaks and live- 
oaks, some heavily hung with moss that swung 
in the breeze like waving hair, shaded the yards 
and streets. And there were vegetable gardens 
checkered and striped with delicately contrasting 
beds and rows of lettuce, cabbages, carrots, beets, 
onions and peas in blossom. I seemed to have 
entered a midwinter Paradise. 

I put up at the St. Charles, famous before the 
war as a hotel, and during one year of the war as 
the headquarters of General Butler. He had not 
left behind him a savory reputation, and I found, to 
my surprise, that General Banks, who succeeded 
him in command of the department, was still less 
respected even by Union men. The rebels had 
a certain respect for Butler, much as they hated 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 303 

him ; his word could be relied upon ; but Banks 
made ready promises to both sides, and kept 
faith with neither. 

A very different man from these was the sturdy 
soldier I found in command of the military divi- 
sion of the Southwest, Major-General Phil Sheri- 
dan. My letters to him were the first I delivered, 
and I scarcely needed any others. He went 
himself to introduce me to Governor Wells, to 
Mayor Kennedy, and to others whom he thought 
it would be pleasant or useful for me to know. I 
found him a man of small stature, somewhat mas- 
sively built, with exceeding toughness of consti- 
tutional fibre, and an alert countenance, alive with 
energy. I inquired if he experienced no reaction 
after the long strain upon his mental and bodily 
powers occasioned by the war. 

"Only a pleasant one," he replied. "During 
my western campaigns, when I was continually in 
the saddle, I weighed only a hundred and fifteen 
pounds. But my flesh was hard as iron. Now I 
weigh a hundred and forty-five." 

His conversation was at times so thickly punc- 
tuated with emphatic expletives, that he once 
paused, and confided to me this interesting ex- 
perience. 

" It 's a blanked bad practice, and when I went 
into the war I was as free from it as a young min- 



3o 4 MY OWN STORY 

ister. I never swore until once when I was get- 
ting some artillery over the mountains of West 
Virginia. The mules would n't pull, the drivers 
were disheartened, all was confusion, everything 
dragged. At last I exploded ; I burst out with a 
volley that worked a miracle." Then followed a 
brief account of how the mules jumped, the boys 
whipped and shouted, the wheels turned almost 
of themselves, and the guns and caissons went 
clattering over the crests ; reminding me of the 
old woman's kid that would n't pass the stile, until 
all at once the mouse began to gnaw the rope, the 
rope began to hang the butcher, the butcher be- 
gan to kill the ox, and so on. " But it 's a blanked 
bad habit," he repeated, " and I don't excuse it in 
anybody." 

He was delightfully frank and familiar; but 
when I asked if he remembered just what he said 
to the routed troops, when he met them on his 
famous ride to Winchester, and turned them back, 
changing disaster to victory, he merely smiled 
significantly, without committing himself to any- 
thing explicit. 

XV 

I left New Orleans by rail for Lake Pontchar- 
train, where just at sunset, one evening, I took the 
steamer for Mobile. It was a night of tranquil 




GEN. P. H. SHERIDAN 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 305 

beauty on the lake. Strange constellations rose 
in the southern hemisphere, while others, around 
the opposite pole, which never set in the latitude 
of our Northern States, sank below the horizon. 
I had never seen the North Star so low before. 

The next morning we were in the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, having entered it by the South Pass. All the 
forenoon we sailed its lustrous, silken waters, with 
tumbling porpoises keeping us company, and peli- 
cans flying around us, or sporting and diving in 
the waves. 

From Mobile I ascended the Alabama River to 
Selma, three hundred miles as the stream twists 
and winds ; proceeding thence to Montgomery, 
Atlanta, Macon, and on through Middle Georgia, 
in the track of Sherman's devouring and devas- 
tating host. According to a tradition which I 
found current there, Sherman remarked, while on 
his grand march through the State, that he had 
his gloves on as yet, but that he would take them 
off in South Carolina. Afterwards, in North Car- 
olina, I heard the counterpart of this story. 
"Boys," said he, "remember we are in the old 
North State now ; " which was equivalent to put- 
ting them on again. If the burned gin-houses, 
cotton-presses, railroad depots, bridges, and freight- 
houses, which blackened his track in Georgia, 
showed what he could do with his gloves on, it 



306 MY OWN STORY 

was appalling to think what he might have done, 
with them off, in South Carolina. 

I made more than one wide detour, and had 
often to resort to stage or private conveyance, to 
get over gaps in the railroads where the tracks had 
been destroyed, and had not yet been rebuilt. The 
relaid tracks were very rough ; many of the old 
rails having been imperfectly straightened and put 
down again. 

Sherman's men had all necessary devices for 
destroying tracks. Said an inhabitant, "They 
could rip 'em up as fast as they could count. They 
burnt the ties and fences to heat the iron red ; 
then two men would take a rail and wrap it around 
a tree or a telegraph post. Our people found some 
of their iron-benders, and they helped mightily 
about straightening the rails again. Only the best 
could be used. The rest the devil could n't 
straighten ! " 

Riding beside the destroyed tracks, it was 
amusing to observe the shapes into which the iron 
had been twisted. " Hairpins " predominated. 
" Corkscrews " were also abundant. Sometimes 
we found four or five rails wound around the trunk 
of a tree, that would have to be cut before they 
could be removed. Some would have a twist in 
the middle, with the ends facing both ways. 
Sherman must have had at least one glove off in 
Eastern Georgia. 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 307 

"A neighbor of mine," said an East Georgian, 
" buried all his gold and silver and built a hog-pen 
over the spot. The Yankees mistrusted a certain 
new look about it, ripped it away, stuck in their 
bayonets, and found the specie. Another hid his 
gold under the brick floor of his smokehouse. 
The rascals smelt out the trick, pulled up the 
floor, got the gold, and then burnt the smoke- 
house. My wife did the neatest thing. She took 
all our valuables, such as watches and silver spoons, 
and hid them in the cornfield. With a knife 
she would just make a slit in the ground, open it 
a little, put in one or two things, and then let 
the top earth down, just like it was before. The 
soldiers went all over that field, sticking in their 
bayonets, but they didn't find a thing. The joke 
of it was, she came very near not finding some of 
the things herself." 

XVI 

From Augusta I hastened on to Savannah, a 
city of strange, semi-tropic aspect ; of which I re- 
member particularly the moist and heavy atmos- 
phere, the night fogs encamping upon it, and the 
dead level of its sandy streets, shaded by two or 
four rows of moss-draped trees. More impressive 
than all else was the marvelous Bonaventure 
Cemetery, with its avenues of indescribable beauty 



308 MY OWN STORY 

and gloom, under long colonnades of huge live- 
oaks, solemn, still, and hoary, the great limbs 
meeting overhead, and bough and branch trailing 
shrouds of long fine moss, that hung in ghostly- 
silence, or waved mysteriously in every sighing 
wind. 

The railroad track running north from Savannah, 
through a country of rice plantations, had been 
converted into Sherman's hairpins and cork- 
screws, and had not yet been rebuilt. But, al- 
though I was now turning my face homeward, and 
should have preferred the wings of a dove with no 
stops at way stations, I was n't sorry for the chance 
that took me around to Charleston by sea. There 
was little travel and less business between the two 
cities at that time ; two or three small steamers 
sufficing for the entire traffic. Going on board 
one of these inferior boats one afternoon, at 
Savannah, I awoke the next morning in Charleston 
harbor. 

A warm, soft, misty morning it was, the pale 
dawn breaking through rifts in the light clouds 
overhead, a vapory horizon of dim sea all around. 
What was that great bulk away on our left, drifting 
silently past us ? It was the thing known as Fort 
Sumter. But it was fast on its rock ; it was we 
who were drifting. It was historic ground we 
were traversing — or, rather, historic water. Fort 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 309 

Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, James Island, — how 
one's heart stirred with the memories these names 
called up ! What was that lying at anchor ? A 
monitor, with a man on its low flat deck walking 
almost level with the water. Two noticeable ob- 
jects followed in our wake. One was a proud- 
beaked New York steamer ; the other, the won- 
derful light of dawn dancing upon the waves. 

Before us all the while, rising and expanding at 
our approach, its wharves and shipping, its ware- 
houses and church steeples gradually taking shape, 
as the low peninsula pushed out between its two 
rivers, was the haughty and defiant little city that 
inaugurated Secession and kindled the fire it took 
a nation's blood to quench. 

The ruins of Charleston were the most pictur- 
esque of all I saw in the South ; the gardens and 
broken walls of many of its finest residences re- 
maining to attest their former elegance. Broad, 
semicircular flights of marble steps, once conduct- 
ing to proud doorways, were cracked and calcined 
slabs, leading up to high foundations, swept of 
everything but the crushed and blackened frag- 
ments of their former superstructures, with here 
and there a broken pillar, and here and there a 
windowless wall. 



3 io MY OWN STORY 

XVII 

In Charleston and its vicinity I saw and talked 
with a great number of people of all conditions, 
high and low ; among others more or less worth 
meeting, Mr. William Gilmore Simms. 

Simms had been a popular author twenty-five 
years before. In my boyhood I had read his 
rather sensational Pelayo, and one or two other of 
his romances, the recollection of which inspired 
me with curiosity to see the author. 

I found him in a printing-office, doing some sort 
of work on a daily paper ; a man of sixty, with 
shortish iron-gray hair and roughish features, — 
not at all my idea of a great writer who could 
harrow up the souls of boy readers. He was quite 
ready to talk to me, particularly upon one topic, 
namely, the damage the Yankees had inflicted 
upon his beloved State and idolized city. 

" Charleston, sir," he said, with a level fixity of 
look, " was the finest city in the world ; not a large 
city, but the finest. South Carolina, sir, was the 
flower of modern civilization. Our people were the 
most hospitable, the most accomplished, having 
the highest degree of culture and the highest sense 
of honor, of any people, I will not say of America, 
sir, but of any country on the globe. And they 
are so still, even in their temporary desolation." 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 311 

All this I could not gainsay ; my intimacy with 
the world's civilizations not being sufficient to en- 
able me to formulate an argument. When I would 
have led him to speak of actual incidents and con- 
ditions, he launched forth more of these orotund 
utterances. As they did not convey precisely the 
sort of information I was in search of, I was unable 
to adorn my pages with them, and find that I did 
not mention Mr. W. G. Simms in my volume. 

XVIII 

Wherever else Sherman may have had his gloves 
on, he certainly had them off on his way from 
Charleston to the State Capital ; and there he 
flung them into the fire. What the rebel invaders 
of Pennsylvania did in a small way at Chambers- 
burg, our army repeated on a scale of appalling 
magnitude at Columbia. 

The city was not destroyed, however, by General 
Sherman's orders. It is quite probable that the 
fire was started by flying flakes of the flaming 
cotton burned by the Confederates themselves in 
their retreat. Then undoubtedly marauders took a 
hand in spreading it. Three fifths of the beautiful 
city went up in roaring flames in one night. 

Through Governor Orr, to whom I had letters, 
I made acquaintance with Mayor Gibbes and other 
citizens ; and to them I was indebted for many 



312 MY OWN STORY 

reminiscences and anecdotes. On the night of the 
fire, a thousand men' could be seen, in the yards 
and gardens of the city, by the light of the flames, 
probing the earth with their bayonets for buried 
plunder. The dismay and terror of the inhabitants 
can hardly be conceived. Trunks and bundles 
were snatched from the hands of hurrying fugi- 
tives, broken open, rifled, and then hurled into the 
flames. Ornaments were plucked from the necks 
and arms of ladies and caskets from their hands. 

An old gentleman who had purchased two 
watches for his grandchildren had one snatched 
from him by a soldier. In his rage and grief he 
exclaimed, " You may as well take the other ! " 
and his suggestion was cheerfully complied with. 

Another sufferer said, "That watch will be 
good for nothing without the key. Won't you 
stop and take it ? " " Thank you," said the sol- 
dier ; and he went off proudly winding his new 
chronometer. 

The soldiers were full of humorous remarks 
about the ruined city. " What curious people you 
are ! " said one. " You run up your chimneys be- 
fore you build your houses." 

One man's treasure, buried by his garden fence, 
escaped the soldiers' divining rods, but was after- 
wards discovered by a hitched horse pawing the 
earth over it. Some treasures were hidden in 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 313 

cemeteries, but they did not always escape the 
search of the soldiers, who showed a strong mis- 
trust of new-made graves. 

I talked with some good Columbians who ex- 
pressed the most violent hatred of the Yankees, 
for the ruin of their homes. Others took a more 
philosophical view of the subject. This difference 
was thus explained to me by Governor Orr's pri- 
vate secretary, a young man (an old man now, if 
he is still living, as I trust he may be) who had 
been an officer in the Confederate service. 

" People who were not in the war cannot under- 
stand or forgive these things. But those who 
have been in the army know what armies are ; 
they know that, under the same circumstances, 
they would have done the same things." 

And I was reminded of Jeff Davis's famous 
speech at Stevenson, Ala., in 1861, in which he 
predicted that grass should grow in the streets of 
Northern cities that Southern armies were to lay 
waste with " sword and torch." 

XIX 

I continued my tour through North Carolina, 
into Virginia again, and at Richmond completed 
the circuit, having given four months to my two 
journeys, and visited ten of the States which had 
been the principal scenes of the Great Conflict. 



3 i4 MY OWN STORY 

I reached home in February, in excellent health, 
and immediately set about the completion of my 
record of observations. 

I sent the manuscript to the printers as fast 
as it was written, and had the last pages through 
the press some time in June. The book — a vol- 
ume of 590 pages, with maps and steel and wood 
engravings — had for title : " The South : Its 
Battle-Fields, Desolated States and Ruined Cities, 
its People and Prospects." I made the narrative 
as literally faithful to facts as the most conscien- 
tious painstaking would permit. Wherever prac- 
ticable, I stepped aside and let the people I met 
speak for themselves. Notes taken on the spot, 
and in many cases under almost insuperable diffi- 
culties, — on horseback, in jolting wagons, by the 
uncertain firelight of a farmhouse or negro camp, 
sometimes in the dark and in the rain, — enabled 
me to do this in many cases with absolute fidel- 
ity. Idiomatic peculiarities, often so expressive 
of character, I was careful to reproduce without 
exaggeration. It was this almost photographic 
and stenographic truthfulness which rendered the 
volume unique among the large number on the 
same subject appearing about the same time. 

While admitting evidence from all classes with- 
out prejudice, I reserved the right of the court to 
render judgment, and expressed my own opinions 



THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 315 

pretty liberally in discussing conditions and causes, 
the results of emancipation and plans of recon- 
struction, negro suffrage, free labor, the educa- 
tion of the freedmen, and kindred questions. I 
shall not trouble the present reader with my ar- 
guments and conclusions, but dismiss the subject 
with a single consideration, which I do not remem- 
ber to have laid stress upon at the time, but which 
recurs to me now with impressive force, in review- 
ing those four months' experiences. It is this : 
that no other country or epoch ever furnished such 
abundant and rich materials for romantic or real- 
istic fiction, humorous, tragic, pathetic, pictur- 
esque, full of great events and of the most amaz- 
ing contrasts of characters and conditions, as 
appealed to the heart and imagination in the old 
slave States, at that period of social upheaval. 
That the currents, counter-currents, and sombre 
abysses of that troubled time have floated some 
bright fiction, must be freely admitted. That 
they did not burst forth and overflow in tidal 
waves of power and passion, lifting a great and 
enduring literature, is the marvel. 

The book had a success which it may have owed 
largely to the Hartford method of selling publica- 
tions " only by subscription." But while this 
may have had advantages in insuring for it a cir- 
culation, it was not so well adapted to enlarging 



3 i6 MY OWN STORY 

the reputation of the writer. The volume had no 
advertising, and was hardly heard of at all in the 
ordinary avenues of the book trade. While agents 
were quietly distributing it in their districts, many 
readers who knew me through my other writings 
remained ignorant that I had produced such a 
work. 

As I had the privilege of using in advance six 
chapters from my book in Ticknor & Fields' two 
periodicals, I gave to The Atlantic those already 
mentioned, and printed four articles, — A Visit to 
Mount Vernon, The Battle-Field of Fredericks- 
burg, Richmond Prisons, and A Tennessee Farm- 
House, — in the other magazine, of which some 
account must now be given, as I was already 
somewhat intimately, and was to be still more 
intimately, associated with its fortunes. 



CHAPTER X 

OUR YOUNG FOLKS AND BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG 



The war was nearing its close, and an era of as- 
sured prosperity for the North was setting in, when 
Mr. Fields invited my cooperation in establishing 
anew "illustrated magazine for boys and girls." 
I at once became interested in it, and, with other 
friends of Mr. Fields, began to consider the im- 
portant question of an appropriate and attractive 
title. Dr. Holmes, who had christened The At- 
lantic, wittily suggested The Atlantic Lighter ; a 
number of other names were proposed and re- 
jected, Our Young Folks being the one finally 
chosen. Well-known contributors were enlisted 
for the early numbers, — Mrs. Stowe, Miss Alcott, 
Whittier, Higginson, Aldrich, Rose Terry, Miss 
Phelps, and a long list besides. Among the later 
writers were Edward Everett Hale and his sister, 
Lucretia Hale (author of the quaint Peterkin 
Papers), Bayard Taylor, James Parton, Mrs. Eliz- 
abeth Akers-Allen, Celia Thaxter, and Charles 
Dickens, who contributed a four-part serial story, 
A Holiday Romance. Lowell and Longfellow also 



3 i8 MY OWN STORY 

were represented by poems. The magazine was 
a financial success from the start. 

The first number was that for January, 1865, 
with the names of J. T. Trowbridge, Gail Hamil- 
ton, and Lucy Larcom on the cover, as editors. 
These were retained until Gail Hamilton's violent 
rupture with the publishers (who were also pub- 
lishers of her books) over a question of copyright, 
which led to her attack upon them — especially 
upon the member of the firm who had been her 
personal friend — in her wonderfully witty but 
woefully unwise Battle of the Books. When it 
was no longer possible to keep her name, all the 
names were quietly dropped from the cover, and 
those of the two other editors appeared only 
on the title-pages of the yearly volumes. Mr. 
Howard M. Ticknor was office editor from the 
first, while I was contributing and (nominally) con- 
sulting editor until, after Mr. Ticknor' s with- 
drawal from the firm and Miss Larcom' s retire- 
ment from the chair in which she temporarily 
succeeded him, I became manager in 1870. 

The firm at that time, under its new name of 
Fields, Osgood & Co., occupied a spacious store 
and chambers at 1 24 Tremont Street, where I had 
a well-furnished and attractive room up two flights, 
with windows overlooking the Common. Below 
mine was the private room of Mr. Fields, then head 



OUR YOUNG FOLKS 319 

of the firm, and editor of The Atlantic. Mr. How- 
ells was his assistant, and soon to be chief, if not 
practically so already. Adjoining Mr. Fields's room 
was a large reading-room, in a corner of which 
Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, conductor of Every 
Saturday, had his desk. In the position of cashier 
and book-keeper was an earnest and capable young 
man, Mr. Edwin D. Mead, who left it in the early 
seventies to complete in Germany his studies for 
some sectarian ministry, his chosen profession, 
which he seems to have outgrown before he en- 
tered it, for when he returned from abroad it was 
to begin a larger life-work in literature and reform. 
The house had a lunch-room, with a generously 
served table, at which publishers and editors met, 
and such contributors and book authors as hap- 
pened to be about were often welcomed. My 
habit was to give only my morning hours to office 
work, and to go home to Arlington at noon ; but 
when I was detained in town, this lunch-table and 
its goodly company made ample amends for the 

inconvenience. 

II 

I contributed to Our Young Folks a great vari- 
ety of articles in prose and verse ; among others, 
Darius Green and his Flying Machine, which im- 
mediately, like The Vagabonds, became a favorite 
with platform readers and reciters all over the 



3 2o MY OWN STORY 

country. I wrote for it a series of papers on prac- 
tical subjects, that were afterwards collected in a 
volume entitled Lawrence's Adventures among 
the Ice-Cutters, Glass-Makers, Coal-Miners, Iron- 
Men, and Ship-Builders, giving in the guise of a 
story carefully studied and accurate accounts of 
the industries described ; in gathering material for 
which I had gone as far as the iron-mills and coal- 
mines of Pennsylvania. To avoid making my own 
name too conspicuous I put the pseudonym Harvey 
Wilder to a series of articles on natural history, 
and that of Augustus Holmes to papers on Vol- 
canoes and Geysers, Mountains and Glaciers, 
What is the Sun ? Glimpses of the Moon, and kin- 
dred topics. I had the satisfaction of knowing 
that I made these subjects interesting, and was 
amused when a critic, in commending this " new 
writer" (Augustus Holmes), concluded his notice 
with the remark : " It would be well if more men 
of science would write in this entertaining style." 
For serials we had Mayne Reid's Afloat in the 
Forest, Kellogg's Good Old Times, Carleton's 
Winning his Way, Dr. Isaac I. Hayes's Cast Away 
in the Cold, Mrs. Whitney's We Girls, Mrs. Diaz's 
William Henry Letters (which, although not in 
the form of a story, were in their naturalness and 
humor more diverting than most stories), and, to 
crown all, T. B. Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy. 



OUR YOUNG FOLKS 321 

III 

I had written short stories for the magazine, but 
none continued through more than three numbers, 
when, in the fall of 1870, after I had become man- 
aging editor, I consulted the publishers as to whom 
I should invite to furnish the serial for the ensuing 
year. It was getting late in the season, and none 
had as yet been volunteered. One of the firm gave 
me a droll look and remarked, in the words of 
Priscilla, "Why don't you speak for yourself, 
John ? " I asked if he meant it. " I mean it ! " 
he answered decisively. 

So I wrote Jack Hazard and his Fortunes, turn- 
ing aside each month from my other work to fur- 
nish the installments, which ran through the twelve 
numbers of 1871. For a subject I went back to 
the Erie Canal, the old Ogden homestead, and 
Spencer's Basin ; and took for my chief character 
a vicious little driver with intent to bring out what 
good was latent in him, by redeeming him from 
evil influences and placing him in favorable sur- 
roundings. Connected with him in interest was 
his noble Newfoundland dog, Lion. The old 
homestead I peopled with the Chatford family, and 
gave to the neighborhood other fictitious charac- 
ters, all true to the life I had known there, but 
none of them portraits. I had great fun in writing 
the story, a chapter of which I would dash off at 



322 MY OWN STORY 

a sitting, in an afternoon, and perhaps send it the 
next day to the printers, with hardly an erasure. 
In each mail came letters showing the interest of 
readers everywhere in Jack and his dog. 

The story had been the leading feature eight or 
nine months, when the same member of the firm 
who had suggested my undertaking the serial (this 
was Mr. John S. Clark, now of the Prang Educa- 
tional Company) said to me, " It won't do to finish 
Jack's Fortunes in the December number ! In 
completing it for the volume, leave it open for a 
sequel, which we will announce for next year. 
That boy and dog are running so well they can't 
stop for another twelvemonth, sure ! " 

Accordingly I followed the initial story with A 
Chance for Himself, and that in turn, for similar 
reasons, with Doing his Best, the third of the Jack 
Hazard series. I had already begun a fourth, Fast 
Friends, the first chapters of which were in type, 
with a large part of the magazine number for Janu- 
ary, 1 874, when the proverbial " thunderbolt out 
of a clear sky " struck the publishing house. 

IV 

The sky was not so clear as it had seemed to 
many of us who were enjoying the fancied security 
of that hospitable roof. Mr. Fields retired from 
the firm in 1871, and Mr. J. R. Osgood (who, like 




J. T. TROWBRIDGE 

At the age of 4b 



OUR YOUNG FOLKS 323 

Mr. Fields, had risen from the ranks in the busi- 
ness) became head of the house. He was able, 
honorable, large-hearted, but aggressive and self- 
confident, and under his leadership the concern 
assumed enterprises involving hazards which the 
other's more conservative judgment could hardly 
have sanctioned. Of these, I remember most about 
Every Saturday, which began, and ran some time, 
as a modest reprint of selections from foreign pe- 
riodicals ; but which J. R. Osgood & Co. (the new 
firm) changed to a large illustrated sheet, designed 
to rival Harper's Weekly in popular favor. It did 
not, however, prove a success ; and before long 
financial difficulties necessitated the disposal of 
The Atlantic Monthly to its present publishers, 
and the sale of Our Young Folks to Scribner & 
Co., who merged it in St. Nicholas. 

Thus again I experienced the severance of agree- 
able and advantageous business relations that I 
had come to consider permanent. With the house 
established by the elder Ticknor, as with that of 
Phillips, Sampson & Co., I had esteemed it an 
honor to be connected ; and once more I felt de- 
prived of a home. The " Old Corner Bookstore " 
(on the corner of Washington and School streets) 
was old and famous as early as when I first came 
to Boston. Phillips, Sampson & Co. had Emerson 
and Prescott leading their list of authors ; while 



3 2 4 MY OWN STORY 

Ticknor & Fields were the publishers of Longfel- 
low and Tennyson, Lowell and Hawthorne, and all 
that goodly company to whose names Emerson's 
was also to be added after the downfall of the 
other house. The acquisition at the same time 
(1859) of Tne Atlantic Monthly had been all that 
was needed to give the Old Corner unrivaled pre- 
eminence as representative of the best literature 
of New England, and of Old England in America. 
I followed The Atlantic with my contributions, 
which led to the publication by the firm, not only 
of my books for the young growing out of Our 
Young Folks, but also of three other books, of 
some importance at least to their author, — Cou- 
pon Bonds and Other Stories, consisting chiefly of 
contributions I had made to The Atlantic and Har- 
per's ; and two volumes of verse, The Vagabonds 
and Other Poems, and The Emigrant's Story and 
Other Poems, also collected from periodicals. The 
scattering of these volumes was not the least of 
the casualties I had to deplore, upon the passing 
of the firm of J. R. Osgood & Co. All, however, 
went into good hands ; and the misfortune that 
lost me the editorship — to which I had become 
attached by so many interests that I felt the loss 
as a personal bereavement — brought with it, as 
misfortunes so often do, its compensation, in the 
freedom it gave to form other engagements. 



OUR YOUNG FOLKS 325 

V 

Along with Our Young Folks the new serial I 
had commenced writing for it went over to St. 
Nicholas, the chapters I had put into type for our 
January number going into the January number 
of that magazine. In the same number I published 
a card, in which, as editor, I took leave of Our 
Young Folks readers, and bespoke their favor for 
the new monthly. 

I confidently expected to finish Jack's career in 
Fast Friends, but that story had been running 
hardly half a year when I was invited to New York 
for a conference with Mr. Roswell Smith and Mrs. 
Dodge, regarding a serial for the ensuing year 
(1875). Mr. Smith was Dr. J. G. Holland's part- 
ner in the publication of St. Nicholas and Scrib- 
ner's Monthly (now The Century). Mrs. Dodge 
was then, as always after, chief editor of St. Nicho- 
las ; and Frank R. Stockton, at that time unknown 
to fame, was, as I well remember, her office assist- 
ant. For a couple of days Mr. Smith, whose guest 
I was, gave a large part of his leisure to making 
my visit pleasant ; and I came home with a com- 
mission to write a fifth Jack Hazard story, The 
Young Surveyor. 

This was the last of the series, Jack hav- 
ing reached manhood, and won the hand of the 
heroine ; but it was not the last of my continued 



326 MY OWN STORY 

stories for St. Nicholas. Others of a similar char- 
acter succeeded, the chief of which were His Own 
Master, The Tinkham Brothers' Tide-Mill, Toby 
Trafford (written at Geneva, during my second 
sojourn abroad), and, passing over several others, 
Two Biddicut Boys (1897), the latest up to this 
time ; all republished duly in book form. 

VI 

While I was still connected with Our Young 
Folks, Mr. Ford (for whom I had previously writ- 
ten a good deal when he was editor of the Watch- 
man and Reflector) asked me for contributions to 
the Youth's Companion, which he had recently 
acquired. The Companion had been started early 
in the century by Nathaniel Willis, father of N. P. 
Willis, and had held the even tenor of its way as 
a rather namby-pamby child's paper, until by a 
curious combination of circumstances Mr. Ford 
woke up one morning to find himself its sole pro- 
prietor. It had then about five thousand subscrib- 
ers. Being a man of broad business views, he 
had at first hardly dreamed of doing much with it ; 
but while looking about for an enterprise nearer 
the level of his ambition, he put some money and 
a good deal of thought and energy into the little 
paper. He was reluctant, he once frankly con- 
fessed to me, to connect his reputation with " so 



THE YOUTH'S COMPANION 337 

small an affair ; " and so issued it over the ficti- 
tious firm name of "Perry Mason & Co.," by 
whom it purports to be published to this day. It 
was for a long time a mystery, even to those who 
had transactions with the concern, who "Perry 
Mason & Co." could be. There was then no other 
" Perry Mason " or " Co." than the quiet little man 
with the pale forehead and round smooth face, 
whose plain signature was to become so familiar to 
me, signed to letters and checks, Daniel S. Ford. 

My engagement with Our Young Folks prohib- 
ited me from writing for any other periodical, ex- 
cept The Atlantic, to which I remained a pretty 
constant contributor ; but as soon as I was released 
from that, Mr. Ford again called on me, and I 
went over to the Companion, writing for it stories 
long and short, and after a while one serial a year, 
for many years. From a mere child's paper he 
was converting it rapidly into a miscellany of the 
very first class for young people and families. Its 
circulation increased at a rate that astonished Mr. 
Ford himself, rising by waves and tides from 
thousands to hundreds of thousands. Of all this 
I felt myself a part, and it was a part which he 
was always magnanimous in recognizing. 

He was as liberal with his pay as he was with 
his praise. Both may have been designed to en- 
courage my contributions ; but I think he was as 



328 MY OWN STORY 

sincere in the one as he was generous in the other. 
The pay he increased voluntarily, without any 
solicitation on my part, often drawing his checks 
for larger sums than our agreement called for, and 
making them from time to time larger and larger, 
until the rate of compensation became, considering 
the circumstances, munificent. Our personal re- 
lations were of the pleasantest. When I handed 
him a manuscript, he frequently drew his check 
for it immediately, without reading it ; always 
urging me to write more. 

Unfortunately, while the paper was building up, 
his health was breaking down ; he became simul- 
taneously an invalid and a millionaire. I was one 
of the last contributors whom he continued to see 
and transact business with personally. At last it 
became so difficult for him to meet any attaches 
of the paper except his " heads of departments," 
as he called them, that I discontinued my visits 
to him, some time in 1887. The business of the 
concern had then grown to prodigious propor- 
tions. He had as many heads of departments as 
the President of the United States, and the paper 
circulated over half a million copies. I once 
heard Dr. Holmes wittily describe the increase in 
the number of instructors in the Medical College 
since his time. "Then," said he, "there were 
five or six of us. Now there are over seventy. 




DANIEL S. FORD 



THE YOUTH'S COMPANION 329 

The roast beef of yesterday is the hashed meat 
of to-day." The change in Mr. Ford's working 
force, from the time when I began with him to 
the last year of our intercourse, was even more 
surprising. He was at first alone in the editor- 
ship and business management. Afterwards Mr. 
Hezekiah Butterworth became editorial assistant. 
Then one by one others were taken on, until 
there were anywhere from twelve to twenty on 
the editorial staff alone. The paper in the mean 
while adopted the policy of securing for its adver- 
tised lists of contributors banner names, which 
were paid for and paraded at a cost that would 
have ruined in a single season a periodical of less 
affluent resources. Even members of the Eng- 
lish royal family were induced to become con- 
tributors to the paper which Mr. Ford, a few 
years before, had been unwilling to put his name 
to as publisher. As he gradually withdrew from 
its management my own contributions to it be- 
came fewer, and ceased almost altogether during 
my second sojourn in Europe from 1888 to 1891. 
I could never feel at home in the paper's pala- 
tial new quarters, and it could never again be to 
me what it had been in the era of its earlier 
marvelous growth, and in the happiest days of 
the remarkable man who may be said to have 
created it. 



33° 



MY OWN STORY 



VII 

My contributions to the Companion comprised, 
besides a large number of short stories and other 
sketches and poems, some of my most success- 
ful serials, among these The Silver Medal, The 
Pocket Rifle, and The Little Master. All the 
long stories and many of the short ones, like my 
contributions to Our Young Folks and St. Nicho- 
las, have been reissued in book form. 

I also wrote a serial for one sensational paper, 
a New York weekly. Although I was offered an 
exceptionally good price for this, I hesitated about 
accepting it until I had consulted two or three 
judicious friends, one of them Mr. Longfellow. 

" Accept it, by all means ! " he said. " Of 
course you will not write down to the level of 
such a paper, but try to bring it up to your level. 
You will have an audience that you would prob- 
ably reach in no other way." And he added 
something more as to the good work I would do 
by showing that literature could be entertaining 
without being melodramatic. 

I furnished the story, which, while not at all sen- 
sational, won the approval of the publishers, and 
which was afterwards included in my sets of books 
for the young, under the title Bound in Honor. 

All this time I continued subject to the "bliss- 



BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG 331 

ful thralldom of the Muse." In 1877 I published 
The Book of Gold, comprising, with the title 
poem, four others of lesser length, all of which 
had first appeared in Harper's Magazine, illus- 
trated with a view to the volume ; A Home Idyl 
in 1 88 1, and The Lost Earl in 1888, both likewise 
made up principally of my metrical contributions 
to periodicals. 

In addition to the five books of verse already 
designated, I will mention Guy Vernon, in a 
Masque of Poets (1878), of the authorship of 
which anonymous novelette in verse I now make 
public acknowledgment. 

VIII 

My stories, written ostensibly for the young, 
were intended for older readers as well ; and this 
was doubtless one secret of their success. I was 
sometimes amused by hearing of a parent carry- 
ing home the periodical containing an installment 
of one of my serials, and hiding it from the 
younger members of the household until he had 
enjoyed the first reading of the chapters. This 
was one of the satisfactions that reconciled me to 
a kind of work not at all in the direction of my 
earlier ambition, but which a sort of fatality — 
perhaps the divinity that shapes our ends — led 
me to do. 



332 MY OWN STORY 

Once when l was trouting in a mountain 
stream I came to one of those po1 holes that peb- 
bles ia whirling eddies occasionally scoop in the 
solid ledge. It was cask shaped, with polished, 

bulging sides, and it was filled with crystal-clear 
water, in the depths of vvhieh were discernible 

fishes oi extraordinary size. They would not rise- 
to ;i fly, but I let down ;i bail, s;iw one of the 
lusty fellows make lor it, and drew out a dace 

about lour or live inches long. Wondering how 
the large fish had missed the hook and allowed a 
little brother to take it, I dropped my bait again, 
once more saw a big one seize it, and once more 
pulled out a small wriggler. I had to repeat this 
process several times before my senses were con- 
vinced that the large fishes were an illusion, oc- 
casioned by a combined retraction and reflection 
of light in the oval shaped rocky receptacle. The 
giants peopling the pot-hole were mere pygmies, 
one and all. 

This lias been largely my experience in life. 
The fish in the pool of anticipation has (with few 
exceptions) appeared vastly larger than when I 
caught and took it from the hook. The fame and 
good foil une I cast my line lor, which hope and 

imagination magnified to such alluring propor- 
tions, proved but modest prizes, when landed in 
the light of common day. Likewise the great 



BOOKS FOR THE yoiinc 

men I have approached have proved i<> be moi 
tals with the usual limitations* when I have come 
to regard them al ihort range, Instead ol great 
epics and works of fiction thai .ill the world would 
be waiting to acclaim, I have written some minor 
poems cued ioi by .1 few, hali ;i dozen novels, and 
a large number ol smallei books, thai have been 
su( « essful enough in then way, 

These last, as I have endeavored to show, were 
written, qo1 so much from choice, as in answer 
to an actual immediate demand foi what, .1:. it 
proved, 1 was well fitted to do, namely, a style <,i 
story thai should not he bad as literature, and 

Which should interest ;it the :„ime lime yoim;; ;uid 

old. This I have been the more willing to do 
because the love story, deemed Indispensable in 
mosl novels, has been so overdone as to become 
flat and unprofitable excepl when retouched vvitii 
exceptional freshness; and because 1 was glad <>i 
an opportunity to produce a Borl ol minoi novel 
true to life, wi!h oihei elements oi Interesl re 
placing thai traditional material. Unquestion 

ably, too, I obeyed ;i l.ivv ol my naluie in moving 

on lines ol least resistance, in novel-writing 1 
had « "mil less 1 ompel Itors, many v.r.i ly ablei 1 han 
myself, in my own j)(( uliai held 1 was alone. 
When 1 was returning from the World's Fail 

in 1893, a young woman journalist came down 



334 MY OWN STORY 

from Buffalo to Lockport to " interview " me, in 
my brother's house, for the Illustrated Express. 
In her three-column article in that paper I was made 
to say many things differently from the manner 
in which I did say them, and others that I did 
not say at all, as is common with " interviewers ; " 
but I find in her report one paragraph which so 
exactly expressed my mind upon the subject of 
my boys' stories that I reproduce it here. " Un- 
doubtedly," I said, " they have in a great measure 
obscured my popularity as a writer of verse. I 
have naturally felt somewhat aggrieved at this. 
My best, fullest, and most thoughtful work has 
been woven into my poems ; yet I find myself far 
more widely known as a story-writer than as a 
poet. But the fact has its compensations. Wher- 
ever I go I am greeted as an old friend by boys, 
or by men who have read my books as boys, or, 
better still, I receive the thanks of some mother 
whose boy she fancies the reading of my books 
has consoled in times of sickness, or perhaps 
helped to find, and inspired to keep, the right road. 
I don't know but that, after all, the most satisfac- 
tory monument I could choose would be to live in 
the hearts and memories of mothers and boys." 



CHAPTER XI 

RECOLLECTIONS OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT 



I had in my early years several literary passions, 
more or less ardent and enduring. The first were 
Scott and Byron, the idols of my boyhood. Then 
it was Poe, the melody and glamour of whose 
verse had for me an indescribable fascination. 
Afterwards came Tennyson, who, with an equal 
sensitiveness to beauty and the magic of words, 
opened fountains of thought and of human in- 
terest that seemed never to have been unsealed in 
Poe. Dickens was an early favorite ; a little later 
Thackeray ; and I had unbounded admiration for 
Carlyle. Shelley I never greatly cared for, except 
in a few lyrics (I could never get through The 
Witch of Atlas or The Revolt of Islam) ; — he had 
fine ^Eolian chords, but a thin sounding-board ; — 
and Keats was too luxurious a draught to be more 
than rarely indulged in. At one time I addicted 
myself to Browning ; and Shakespeare I had al- 
ways with me. Macaulay, Montaigne, Plato, Whit- 
man, — to each of these I gave in turn seasons 



336 MY OWN STORY 

of almost exclusive devotion. But of all writers 
ancient or modern, poets, philosophers, prophets, 
the one to whom my spiritual indebtedness was 
first and last the greatest, was Emerson. 

II 

I heard much of Emerson during my first years 
in Boston, but through such false echoes that 
mere prejudice rendered me indifferent to the 
man and his message. More than to any other 
source, I owed this misconception to Boston's 
favorite evening paper, whose versatile and gifted 
editor — himself a poet, the author of at least one 
popular song, and of two or three dramas more or 
less successful — now and again printed extracts 
from Emerson's writings, with such comments 
upon them as perverted their meaning and ex- 
posed them to ridicule. It was not till long after 
this that my own experience taught me to dis- 
trust such extracts ; as when some critic accused 
me of making the new moon rise in the east, cit- 
ing from one of my stories a sentence that really 
seemed to convict me of the blunder he at the 
same time charged against Coleridge, in the 
famous lines, — 

" From the sails the dew did drip — 
Till clomb above the eastern bar 
The horned moon, with one bright star 
Within the nether tip." 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 337 

Just what the Ancient Mariner had in his vivid 
but somewhat ill-regulated imagination, I will not 
stop to discuss ; but what I described — as the 
context would have shown — was the " horned 
moon " indeed, rising over the city roofs ; not the 
new moon, however, but the old moon, — not cre- 
scent but decrescent, — which the youthful hero 
of the story, in studying the stars from his scuttle 
window too long past midnight, saw (as I myself 
had seen it in just such circumstances) soaring 
pale and ghost-like in the morning sky. This early 
moon (which Coleridge undoubtedly had in mind, 
with the morning star not too literally " within the 
nether tip ") my critic had very likely never ob- 
served; just as the talented editor of evening news 
had never witnessed those splendors of the spirit- 
ual dawn which the poet-seer discerned, and which 
his detractors saw fit to discredit and deride. 

With this editor (the same who had previously 
declined to print my sonnet to Theodore Parker) 
I became acquainted later, and found him to be 
not only a person of taste and culture, as his own 
writings showed, but a fair-minded man, who 
would not, I am sure, have done any one an inten- 
tional wrong. But how great a wrong he had 
done, not only to Emerson, but still more to me, 
I became aware, when a happy chance revealed to 
me the constellations of thought against which he 
had so long helped to keep my scuttle closed. 



338 MY OWN STORY 

It was a passage from Emerson in Griswold's 
Prose Writers of America which, by its incisive- 
ness of style and singular suggestiveness, startled 
me as by a new discovery, and sent me hasting to 
the nearest bookstore for the first volume of the 
Essays. This must have been in the latter part 
of 1852 ; for in my copy of the Second Series I 
find my name and the date written, "January, 
1853 ; " and I had read, and proclaimed from the 
housetop of my enthusiasm, and given away, the 
First Essays, before I procured another copy, 
along with the Second Series. The First Series I 
have now in a later edition, 1859; between which 
and the earlier one I must have possessed and 
parted with several successive copies, which in 
those days I had a mania for presenting to friends 
who had not read Emerson, and to whom I ima- 
gined he would bring as welcome a revelation as 
he had brought to me ; choosing always the First 
Series, comprising Self-Reliance, Spiritual Laws, 
and Heroism, for that propaganda. It was a fond 
illusion. I found that those gift copies were sel- 
dom read ; or, if read at all, that their beauties 
were but hazily perceived, and their skyey herald- 
ings unheeded. 

To the Essays I quickly added the Poems, Re- 
presentative Men, Nature, and the Addresses, con- 
tributions to The Dial, — whatever of Emerson I 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 339 

could lay my eager hands on. No words of mine 

are adequate to describe the effect upon me of 

those extraordinary writings. It was more like the 

old-time religious conversion or change of heart 

than anything I had ever before experienced ; 

some such effect as the best Biblical writings 

might have had, if I could have brought to them 

as fresh and receptive a mind, undulled by the 

dreary associations of my Sunday-school going and 

pew-imprisoned boyhood. They inspired me with 

self-trust ; they reinforced my perceptions, and 

opened new vistas of ideas, as if some optic glass 

of highly magnifying and separating power had 

been added to my hitherto unaided vision. They 

caused me to make vows to truth, to purity, to 

poverty, — if poverty should be the penalty of 

absolute obedience to truth ; vows, alas, which had 

often to be renewed, but never to be disowned or 

renounced. 

Ill 

When I considered by what misrepresentations 
I had been kept out of that which I felt to be an 
inestimable birthright, I could not quite forgive 
their author ; and I had afterwards an opportunity 
of knowing that the injury had touched one more 
deeply concerned than I. That opportunity came 
after I had begun to publish my first small books 
through Phillips, Sampson & Co., who were also 



34 o MY OWN STORY 

the publishers of Emerson's volumes. They were 
at the same time issuing a series of English clas- 
sics, under the supervision of the Boston editor in 
question. 

Entering the bookstore one forenoon, I met the 
said editor going out; and presently saw Emer- 
son at a shelf examining some books. In the pri- 
vate office I found Mr. Phillips, who received me 
with a curious smile, and, when I had entered, 
closed the door. Then he related with quiet glee 
a circumstance that had just occurred. The edi- 
tor, seeing Emerson at the book-shelves, had 
asked Mr. Phillips for an introduction to him. Mr. 
Phillips said, " I will consult Mr. Emerson ; " and 
going out into the bookroom he proposed the pre- 
sentation. Emerson bent his brows and responded 
in his slow, emphatic way, — 

" Sargent ? Mr. Epes Sargent, of the Evening 
Transcript ? " Then, after a pause : " I have no- 
thing for Mr. Sargent, and Mr. Sargent has nothing 
for me." Perfectly dispassionate and dignified ; 
but there was nothing more to be said, and Mr. 
Phillips had to go back to his visitor, and tell him 
that the desired introduction was declined. I was 
pleased through and through to learn how my own 
grievance in the matter had been atoned for, and 
still more interested to find that even the serene 
Concord sage was, after all, human, and capable of 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 341 

a righteous resentment, — if that can indeed be 
called by so misleading a name which was more 
likely the feeling he avowed in his letter to Henry 
Ware, regarding their differences of opinion : " I 
shall read what you and other good men write, as 
I have always done, — glad when you speak my 
thought, and skipping the page that has nothing 
for me." He simply " skipped " Mr. Sargent. 

It may be in place here to state that the con- 
servative editor grew in time to be as radical as 
Parker, if not as transcendental as Emerson ; dur- 
ing the war of emancipation he published an anti- 
slavery novel, and afterwards wrote books on 
spiritualism, of which he became an earnest expo- 
nent. 

That the average editor and man of culture 
should have found in Emerson many enigmas 
seems natural enough, and hardly to need an 
apology, since even the young Cambridge poet, 
Henry W. Longfellow, could write in a letter to 
his father, upon the appearance of the first book 
of Essays, in 1841, that it was "full of sublime 
prose poetry, magnificent absurdities, and simple 
truths. It is a striking book, but as it is impossi- 
ble to see any connection between the ideas, I do 
not think it would please you." The lack of con- 
nection was indisputable ; and, if a fault, charac- 
teristic. There was nothing of the willow or the 



342 MY OWN STORY 

elm, no graceful sweep of foliage or drooping spray, 
in the mind of the man or in his style of writing. 
His ideas were like the needles of the pine, each 
separate, pointed, bristling, in number infinite, 
crowning the stately stem that was a symbol of 
himself, as it was his favorite among all the forest 
trees. 

Once on an ocean voyage an accomplished Bel- 
gian who was coming to this country asked me 
about our best writers. I gave him a volume of 
Emerson, and he undertook the essay on Man- 
ners. In a little while he came to me in amaze- 
ment and disgust, declaring that there was no 
logical sequence in the thoughts. I said, "That 
does not trouble me. I see the mountain peaks, 
and take for granted the invisible range out of 
which they rise." But for him, without clear 
logical sequence there was no such thing as style. 

IV 

At the time of the Sargent episode I had myself 
never spoken with Emerson, and should have 
deemed it high presumption on my part to ask to 
be presented to him. All the more gratifying 
therefore was the way in which our first interview 
came about. Entering the publisher's private 
room one day, I found Mr. Emerson there ; and, 
having said " Good-morning " to Mr. Phillips, I 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 343 

retired to the bookroom. There Mr. Phillips came 
to me and said Mr. Emerson would like to meet 
me. Thrilled with happy surprise, yet doubtful, I 
said, " I am afraid you suggested it ! " " Not at 
all," he replied. " When you spoke to me in the 
orifice, he kept his eyes on you ; and after you had 
gone out, he asked, ' Is that somebody I ought to 
know ? ' I told him who you were, and he said, 
1 1 wish to see him ! ' " 

Just when this occurred I cannot now recall, ex- 
cept that it was in the spring of the year; for 
when, after one of his questions I told him that I 
lived in Boston, he inquired, " How can you spare 
the country, this gay spring weather ? " I said, 
" That is something we cannot spare altogether ; 
we must have our Woodnotes, and be free to fol- 
low our Forerunners." The moment I had spoken 
I feared he might regard the allusion to his poems 
as idle compliment ; but it evidently did not dis- 
please him. With his " wise, sweet smile," he re- 
marked, " I confess a tender interest in any men- 
tion of my poems ; I am so seldom reminded that 
they are ever read by anybody. It is only my 
prose that gives them a sort of vicarious vitality ; " 
a just statement of the comparative esteem in 
which his prose and verse were held in those early 
years of the second half of the century. After 
some deprecatory words from me, he went on, in 



344 MY OWN STORY 

his peculiar, hesitating manner, pausing often as 
if seeking the right word, then uttering it with an 
emphasis that relieved it of any suspicion of uncer- 
tainty : — 

" I feel it a hardship that — with something of 
a lover's passion for what is to me the most pre- 
cious thing in life, poetry — I have no gift of 
fluency in it, only a rude and stammering utter- 
ance." 

After this I felt there was no longer any danger 
of appearing a base flatterer ; I forgot his fine in- 
junction of forbearance, in the presence of high 
behavior to refrain from speech, — 

" Nobility more nobly to repay ; " — 

and averred the penetrating thought, often the in- 
comparable note of beauty and sweetness, I found 
in his verse, citing some lines that at least attested 
an appreciative familiarity with it. "Here and 
there a touch ; here and there a grain among the 
husks," he smilingly admitted. To all which I lis- 
tened with intense interest, having hitherto been 
barely able to conceive of any limitations, con- 
scious or other, in the master I so much revered ; 
fancying the rudenesses he deplored to be an es- 
sential part of his scheme, a relieving background 
to his beauties ; fondly imagining some magic of 
genius even in his rare grammatical lapses, like 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 345 

the strange error of construction in these lines, 
perpetuated, I think, in later editions, — an error 
which a simple transposition of the words to their 
natural order will instantly reveal, — 

11 There need no vows to bind 
Whom not each other seek, but find." 

The talk turning upon other topics, I remem- 
ber particularly what was said of Alcott, one of 
whose " Conversations " I had lately attended, 
and found, as I confessed, disappointing. I said, 
" It was no doubt partly my fault that he was n't 
inspired ; for, as he told us complacently after- 
wards, 'a wise man among blockheads is the great- 
est blockhead of all.' " 

With an amused smile Emerson replied, " That 
is Alcott ! He is wise, but he cannot always com- 
mand his wisdom. More than most men, he needs 
provocation — and the happy moment." When I 
asked why so great a man had never written any- 
thing remarkable, he said, "He makes sad work 
indeed when he attempts to put his thoughts on 
paper; as if the jealous Muse forsook him the 
moment he betakes himself to his pen." I recall 
also this observation : " He has precious goods on 
his shelves ; but he has no show-window." This 
was the first time I ever heard the " show-window " 
metaphor used in this way, and I am inclined to 
think it originated with Emerson, perhaps on this 



346 MY OWN STORY 

occasion. I myself may have aided to popularize 
it by quoting him. 

I had after that opportunities of seeing the 
more familiar side of the sage ; and I remember 
how scandalized I once was, at a Saturday Club 
dinner (when I was present as a guest, not as a 
member), to hear him rallied by the convivial and 
too irreverent Horatio Woodman for his " neglect 
of duty " and " want of conscience " in some 
business of the club. Emerson took the badinage 
in good part, answering, in a sort of dazed sur- 
prise, that he had not understood just what part 
of the neglected business had been intrusted to 
him. "You should have known," said Wood- 
man. "Every member of this club is expected 
to do his duty." I could n't help recalling the 
incident, a few years later, when Woodman sud- 
denly dropped out, not only from the Saturday 
Club, but from all business and social circles that 
knew him so well as a man of affairs and a con- 
sorter with literary celebrities ; vanishing in a 
manner that unfortunately gave color to charges 
of " neglect of duty," and even of the more serious 
"want," on his part. 

At that same table I, for the first and only time, 
saw Emerson, sitting opposite me, light a cigar, 
and pull away at it as unconcernedly as the least 
saintly man at the board. That he should partake 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 347 

sparingly of wine, I regarded as fitting enough. 
But to me there appeared something incongruous 
about the cigar, I hardly know why ; for it always 
seemed right and proper that Holmes, Lowell, 
and even Longfellow should smoke. I believe, 
however, that Emerson did not have the tobacco 
habit. His indulgence (if it was an indulgence) 
was limited to rare occasions. 

V 

Emerson's appearance was striking, and his 
manner not without a certain austere awkward- 
ness, especially noticeable on the lecture platform, 
where for years I seldom missed an opportunity 
of hearing him. He was tall and spare, with a 
marked stoop of the shoulders, a head carried 
slightly forward, and fine eyes of a peculiar peer- 
ing, penetrating expression. The strong aquiline 
nose was the most characteristic feature, but he 
had ears to match ; they were the side wheels to 
that prow ; viewed behind, they stood out from 
his head like wings borrowed from the feet of 
Mercury. The head itself was one to baffle 
phrenology. There seemed to be nothing re- 
markable about it except its unusual height in 
the spiritual and moral regions, veneration, firm- 
ness, self-esteem. It was otherwise almost com- 
monplace, full in the observing faculties, but 



348 MY OWN STORY 

falling away to flatness in what is known as 
causality ; likewise full, however, in ideality and 
sublimity. His power did not lie in the so-called 
reasoning faculties ; he neither possessed nor 
overmuch esteemed the gifts of the controver- 
sialist and the dialectician. He never argued, he 
announced ; what was reasoning in others was in 
him a questioning of the perceptions. To all this 
add temperament, genius, the torrential source of 
being we name the soul, elusive to the anatomist, 
and to the fumbling fingers of the phrenologist 
forever past finding out. 

In lecturing he had but one gesture, a down- 
ward thrust of his clenched right hand, held con- 
torted and tense at his side, and used with uncon- 
scious earnestness in driving his imaginary stakes. 
He was at times amusingly careless with his manu- 
script, losing his place and searching for it with 
stoical indifference to his patiently waiting audi- 
ence, — " up to my old tricks," as I once heard 
him say, when he was an unusually long time 
shuffling the misplaced leaves. He had the same 
habit that marked his conversation, of seeming 
often to pause and hesitate before coming down 
with force upon the important word. His voice 
was a pure baritone, and a perfect vehicle for his 
thought, which in great and happy moments im- 
parted to it a quality I never heard in any other 




RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 349 

human speech. Schools of oratory, teachers of 
elocution, might have learned a new lesson from 
those resonant intonations ; and I knew at least 
one professor of the art who studied them with 
the closest admiring attentiveness. Professor 
Lewis Monroe, who had himself a voice of extra- 
ordinary breadth and mellowness and of highest 
culture, once said to me, as we walked away 
together from one of the lectures, " Those tones 
cannot be taught ; they are possible only to him 
who can fill them with the same energy of spirit ; 
it is the soul that creates that voice." Wendell 
Phillips had an organ of greater range, on the 
whole the most effective oratorical instrument I 
ever heard ; it had all the notes of persuasion, 
sarcasm, invective, impassioned appeal ; in its 
combination of qualities surpassing that of the 
graceful and finished Everett, the witty and fa- 
miliar Beecher, the too ponderous Sumner, the 
almost inspired Kossuth, — even the voice of the 
great Webster, as I heard it, probably in its 
decadence, when the worn and weary statesman 
was lifted to his feet, to make his last speech in 
Faneuil Hall. Emerson was no orator, like either 
of these ; he had no gift of extemporary utterance, 
no outburst of improvisation. But in the expres- 
sion of ethical thought, or in downright moral 
vehemence, I believed and still believe him un- 



35o MY OWN STORY 

equaled. Well I remember how he once thrilled 
an immense audience in Tremont Temple, in the 
Kansas Free State war days, in speaking of the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence, 
which Rufus Choate had recently brushed rather 
contemptuously aside as "glittering generalities." 
Emerson quoted the phrase ; then after a mo- 
ment's pause, hurled at the remotest benches 
these words, like ringing javelins : " They do 
glitter ! they have a right to glitter ! " with a 
concentrated power no orator could have sur- 
passed. 

VI 

The Alcott Conversation to which I have al- 
luded was held one evening, at the house of Mr. 
Alonzo Newton, in Cambridge ; and there were 
present, besides myself, Mr. and Mrs. Newton and 
Mr. Lewis Monroe, all eager for new thought 
and full of the joyous anticipation of listening to 
so sublime a teacher. I recollect his main stock 
of ideas, — upon diet (he was a vegetarian, as I 
had once been for a good twelvemonth) ; upon 
temperament, insisting upon the superiority of 
the light, or angelic, to the dark, or demonic, and 
instancing himself and Emerson as types of the 
" highest," Mrs. Newton and myself as " almost 
the highest," and Mr. Newton and Mr. Monroe 
as much lower in the scale ; then, among other 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 351 

things, the proper attitude of a wise man uttering 
his wisdom, — not standing, but seated (he himself 
always sat). As Monroe had aspirations toward 
oratory, and usually felt an impulse to rise to his 
feet when he had anything impressive to say even 
to a small audience, he ventured a question on 
that point ; to which Alcott answered serenely 
that such an attitude might be natural to a person 
of the inferior temperament, but not to one of the 
purer type. I said I should hardly suppose that 
temperament had so much to do with it, in Mon- 
roe's case, as his habit in teaching; he was accus- 
tomed to talking on his feet ; I was not, and would 
never talk on my feet, if I could help it. Alcott 
said oracularly, "I teach ; I sit." 

He thereupon took from his pocket a limp- 
covered book in which were copied or pasted 
selections that he at times relied upon to help 
out his Conversations. He first read Emerson's 
Bacchus (which I knew by heart), and read it 
badly, in a sort of schoolboy manner, amazing in 
one who called himself a teacher, and who had 
in fact been a school-teacher many years of his 
life. This he followed with The Goblet, the first 
lines of which were indelibly impressed upon 
my memory by the twang and unction of his 
intonations. 



352 MY OWN STORY 

" I drank the dregs of every cup, 
All institutions I drank up ; 
But still one cup remains for me, 
The sacred cup of Family." 

" That is not Emerson's ? " I commented, al- 
though the poem had lines in Emerson's manner, 

— I should say now in Emerson's worst manner. 
" It is — not — Emerson's," Alcott slowly re- 
plied ; and as no further comment was forthcom- 
ing, he closed the book, in a dead silence. I knew 
then that the poem was his own, as well as I did 
when I saw it long afterwards in his Tablets, with 
emendations, and — what was still more to its 
advantage — without the singsong. As Monroe 
was then beginning his great work as a teacher of 
elocution, which finally developed into the School 
of Oratory (of Boston University), and as the first 
principle of his system was absolute naturalness 
of tone and emphasis, I felt — and indeed a glance 
at his countenance during the reading assured me 

— that he had pleasantly recovered from the shock 
of having his impulse as to attitude condemned 
by our philosopher as belonging to the lower tem- 
perament. 

After that, more abstruse subjects were intro- 
duced, and Alcott threw out some of his transcen- 
dental ideas, not with any coherence or coordina- 
tion, but rather in hints and tangents. These 




LEWIS B. MONROE 

At the age of 38 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 353 

regarded preexistence, — which he entertained 
not poetically, like Wordsworth in his Intimations, 
but more literally even than Plato, from whom his 
particular views on the subject appeared to have 
been derived, — with especial reference to the 
"lapse." By this he meant the lapse from the 
original state of perfection in which the souls of 
men were created, and from which they fell be- 
fore they were born into the world, or there was a 
world for them to be born into. The creation of 
the world itself seemed to have been disastrously 
affected by this lapse. As, according to Spenser, 
whose familiar line he quoted, — 

" Soule is forme, and doth the bodie make," — 

so, according to Alcott, by a supposed law of cor- 
respondences more subtle than Swedenborg's, the 
soul of man made the world, and, because of the 
said lapse, flawed it with imperfections. Reptiles 
and other malignant and grotesque creatures were 
merely man's low thoughts and evil dispositions 
projected into those concrete forms. It was anew 
juggling of the old riddle, — if man was created 
perfect, how could he fall ? and, since a sinless 
deity could not have created sin, how came sin into 
the world ? It was hard to tell whether this curi- 
ous readaptation of the Calvinistic dogmas of the 
fall of man and the origin of evil, with its strong 



354 MY OWN STORY 

flavor of Neo-Platonism, was to be received as 
fact or fable ; but what I learned subsequently of 
Alcott's philosophy convinced me that it was seri- 
ously meant. Even in those early days, before 
the publication of The Origin of Species had revo- 
lutionized nineteenth-century thought, the best 
minds were coming gradually to a perception of 
the truth, — more or less dimly foreshadowed by 
here and there a writer ancient or modern, — that 
the methods of nature are evolutionary ; that, as 
Emerson expressed it, in the fine pre-Darwinian 
lines, — 

" Striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 

But Alcott's theory was quite the reverse of this, 
— that man, instead of ascending through nature, 
had descended into it from some previous state 
of existence, and had muddled it. Much of this 
appeared to me hazy fantasticality. We found him, 
nevertheless, an interesting man, and well worth 
our money (his fee for a Conversation was any- 
where from five dollars upwards, or whatever his 
friends chose to give him) ; although this particu- 
lar Conversation proved, as I confessed to Emer- 
son, disappointing. 

VII 
Some time after this I had the pleasure of at- 
tending another of these Conversations, which was 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 355 

held at the house of Dr. William F. Charming, — 
a son of the great Channing, and a man of scien- 
tific attainments, well known at that time as the 
inventor of Boston's system of electric fire alarm. 
Alcott should on that occasion have talked well, 
if ever ; for there were present, besides Channing 
and other persons of culture, Whipple the essayist, 
and Emerson himself. Even in that atmosphere 
his genius spread but feeble and ineffectual wings. 
The Conversation was much more constrained 
than it had been in the smaller company at Mr. 
Newton's ; and I remember how depressingly it 
flagged, until Emerson, as if to prompt his friend, 
perhaps also to give him a hint as to his inert con- 
dition and a chance to explain himself out of it, 
spoke of the intermittence of the divine influx, 
saying with his customary alternating pause and 
compensating emphasis, — "What do you think 
of the — solstice ? of the — eclipse ? We are not 
always — in the sun." 

Yet with that opening Alcott had only cloudy 
and commonplace suggestions to make, regarding 
reaction after effort, periods of rest, and the like ; 
never once soaring into the blue. I could not 
help recalling, and wishing to quote, the fine sen- 
tences Emerson himself had struck out on this 
theme, in one of his essays, writing of the differ- 
ence between one hour and another in life ; of our 



356 MY OWN STORY 

faith coming in moments, our power descending 
into us we know not whence ; and of our being 
pensioners of this ethereal river whose flowing we 
neither control nor comprehend. I was able sub- 
sequently to recall many things said by others that 
evening, although nobody talked particularly well ; 
but hardly anything of Alcott's. His part in the 
Conversation seemed strangely lacking in spon- 
taneity and point. If to me so much less memo- 
rable than I had previously found it, at my friend's 
house in Cambridge, it could not, I am sure, have 
been altogether owing to my greater susceptibility 
to the first impression. 

VIII 

Alcott was tall and well proportioned, with thin 
white hair worn in long, flowing locks, a pure, pale 
complexion, placid features, and a rather loose 
mouth. Placidity appeared to be his normal con- 
dition, from which you would have said no con- 
ceivable circumstances could rouse him to any dis- 
play of energy. If an acquaintance met him in 
the woods, he could be counted upon to do two 
things, — begin to discourse, and to look about 
for a log to sit down on. He began life as a 
Yankee peddler ; but that occupation, commonly 
thought inseparable from shrewdness and an eye 
for the dollar, did not seem to have developed in 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 357 

him a sense of the practical value of money, or of 
pecuniary obligation. He had perfect faith in a 
Providence that justified the ways and looked out 
for the welfare of the saints. A friend of mine 
once saw him on a Nantasket boat, without a 
ticket, or money to pay for one. When called 
to account by the fare-taker, he remarked inno- 
cently that the trip had attracted him, and that he 
believed "there would be some provision" — a 
belief that was immediately vindicated by a pas- 
senger recognizing him, and stepping up to make 
the said "provision." There were times, before 
his daughter Louisa began to earn money by her 
facile and popular pen, when the family would 
have starved but for the generous gifts of Emer- 
son and others, and the energies of Mrs. Alcott, a 
woman of great worth and good sense, who kept 
the wolf from the door while her husband dreamed 
dreams. 

I met him occasionally in those years, and tried 
hard to accept his own estimate of himself, and 
to see in him what Emerson saw. His own esti- 
mate and what Emerson saw are curiously shown 
in a passage from Emerson's diary, quoted in San- 
born's Life of Alcott : "I said to him, ' A great 
man formulates his thought. Who can tell what 
you exist to say ? You at least ought to say what 
is your thought, what you stand for.' He looked 



358 MY OWN STORY 

about a little and answered that he ' had not a lec- 
ture or a book, — but if Zoroaster, Pythagoras, 
Socrates, Behmen, Swedenborg were to meet in 
this town, he should not be ashamed, but should 
be free of that company.' It was well said, and 
I know not whom in this country they would ask 
for so readily." 

I wrote once, in an epigram intended for the 
eye of a friend : — 

Do you care to meet Alcott ? His mind is a mirror, 
Reflecting the unspoken thought of his hearer : 
To the great he is great ; to the fool he 's a fool : 
In the world's dreary desert a crystalline pool, 
Where a lion looks in and a lion appears ; 
But an ass will see only his own ass's ears. 

But he was not always great even to the great. 
Margaret Fuller, who had unsurpassed opportuni- 
ties of judging him, having known him intimately 
for years and been associated with him in his 
famous Boston school, — of whom he himself wrote 
(in his diary) that she had " a deeper insight into 
character than any of her contemporaries," — 
never found Alcott " great " until on one happy 
occasion, regarding which she wrote to Emerson, 
" I am inclined to think he deserves your praise, 
and that he deceived neither you nor himself in 
saying I had not yet seen him." This seems, 
however, to have been an exceptional experience 




A. BRONSON ALCOTT 



EMERSON AND ALCOTT 359 

on the part of Miss Fuller. If it took the fore- 
most woman of her day so long to obtain even 
that glimpse, it is small wonder that to so many 
who lacked her opportunities the "lion" should 
have remained unrevealed. 

When I found that even his most illustrious 
friend failed at times to evoke a luminous image 
from the pool that to my apprehension appeared 
oftener stagnant than crystalline, I was still bound 
to credit those who discovered in him a profundity 
I could never perceive. Yet I have marveled not 
a little at Emerson's taking so seriously preten- 
sions that must even to him at times have seemed 
grotesque, as when Alcott once said to him (as 
cited again in Sanborn's Life of Alcott), "You 
write of Plato, Pythagoras, Jesus ; why do not you 
write of me ? " 



CHAPTER XII 

WALT WHITMAN — WITH GLIMPSES OF CHASE 
AND O'CONNOR 



I first made acquaintance with Whitman's writ- 
ings when a newspaper notice of the earliest edi- 
tion of Leaves of Grass reached me, in Paris, in 
the autumn of 1855. It was the most exhilarating 
piece of news I had received from America during 
the six months of my absence abroad. Such vigor, 
such graphic force, such human sympathy, such 
scope and audacity in the choice and treatment of 
themes, found in me an eagerly interested reader 
of the copious extracts which the notice contained. 
When I came to see the volume itself, — the thin, 
small quarto of 1855, — I found in it much that 
impressed me as formless and needlessly offensive ; 
and these faults were carried to extremes in the 
second and enlarged edition of 1856. Yet the 
tremendous original power of this new bard, and 
the freshness, as of nature itself, which breathed 
through the best of his songs or sayings, continued 
to hold their spell over me, and inspired me with 



WALT WHITMAN 361 

intense curiosity as to the man. But I had no 
opportunity of meeting him till he came to Boston 
in the spring of i860, to put his third edition 
through the press. 

Then, one day, I was stopped on Washington 
Street by a friend who made this startling an- 
nouncement : " Walt Whitman is in town ; I have 
just seen him ! " When I asked where, he replied : 
"At the stereotype foundry, just around the 
corner. Come along ! I'll take you to him." The 
author of Leaves of Grass had loomed so large in 
my imagination as to seem almost superhuman ; 
and I was filled with some such feeling of wonder 
and astonishment as if I had been invited to meet 
Socrates or King Solomon. 

We found a large, gray-haired and gray-bearded, 
plainly dressed man, reading proof-sheets at a desk 
in a little dingy office, with a lank, unwholesome- 
looking lad at his elbow, listlessly watching him. 
The man was Whitman, and the proofs were those 
of his new edition. There was a scarcity of chairs, 
and Whitman, rising to receive us, offered me his ; 
but we all remained standing except the sickly 
looking lad, who kept his seat until Whitman 
turned to him and said, " You 'd better go now ; 
I'll see you this evening." After he had gone 
out, Whitman explained : " He is a friendless boy 
I found at my boarding place. I am trying to 



362 MY OWN STORY 

cheer him up and strengthen him with my mag- 
netism ; " a practical but curiously prosaic illus- 
tration of these powerful lines in the early 
poems : — 

" To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the 

door. . . . 
I seize the descending man, I raise him with resistless will. . . . 

despairer, here is my neck, hang your whole weight upon me ! 

1 dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up, 

Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force, lovers of 

me, bafflers of graves ; 
Sleep ! they and I keep guard all night, 
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you." 

The difference between the prosaic fact and the 
poetic expression was not greater than the contrast 
between Whitman as I had imagined him and the 
simple, well-mannered man who stood and talked 
with us. From his own descriptions of himself, 
and from the swing and impetus of his lines, I 
had pictured him proud, alert, grandiose, defiant of 
the usages of society ; and I found him the quiet- 
est of men. I really remember but one thing he 
said, after sending away the boy. The talk turning 
on his proof-sheets, I asked how the first poems 
impressed him, at this re-reading ; to which he 
replied, " I am astonished to find myself capable 
of feeling so much." The conversation was all 
very quiet, pitched in a low key, and I went away 
somewhat disappointed that he did not say or do 



WALT WHITMAN 363 

something extraordinary and admirable ; one of 
the noticeable things about him being an absence 
of all effort to make a good impression. 

II 

I got on vastly better with him when, the next 
Sunday morning, he came out to see me on Pros- 
pect Hill, in Somerville, where I was then living 
(in the later home of the Newtons). 

The weather was perfect, — it was early May ; 
the few friends I introduced to him were congenial 
spirits ; he was happy and animated, and we spent 
the day together in such hearty and familiar inter- 
course that when I parted with him in the evening, 
on East Cambridge bridge, having walked with 
him thus far on his way back to Boston, I felt that 
a large, new friendship had shed a glow on my 
life. Of much of that day's talk I have a vivid 
recollection, — even of its trivialities. He was not 
a loud laugher, and rarely made a joke, but he 
greatly enjoyed the pleasantries of others. He 
liked especially any allusion, serious or jocular, to 
his poems. When, at dinner, preparing my dish 
of salad, I remarked that I was employed as his 
critics would be when his new edition was out, he 
queried, " Devouring Leaves of Grass ? " " No," 
I said, " cutting up Leaves of Grass ! " — which 
amused him more, I fancy, than the cutting up 



364 MY OWN STORY 

did that came later. As the afternoon waned, 
and he spoke of leaving us, the vivacious hostess 
placed a book before the face of the clock. I 
said " Put Leaves of Grass there. Nobody can 
see through that." " Not even the author ? " he 
said, with a whimsical lifting of the brows. 

Much of the talk was about himself and his 
poems, in every particular of which I was pro- 
foundly interested. He told me of his boyhood 
in Brooklyn ; going to work in a printing office at 
the age of fourteen ; teaching school at seventeen 
and eighteen; writing stories and sketches for 
periodicals under his full name, Walter Whitman 
(his first Leaves of Grass was copyrighted by 
Walter Whitman, after which he discarded " Wal- 
ter " for " Walt ") ; editing newspapers and mak- 
ing political speeches, on the Democratic side ; 
leading an impulsive, irregular sort of life, and 
absorbing, as probably no other man ever did, the 
common aspects of the cities he was so proud of, 
Brooklyn and New York. His friendships were 
mostly with the common people, — pilots, drivers, 
mechanics ; and his favorite diversions crossing 
the ferries, riding on the top of omnibuses, and 
attending operas. He liked to get off alone by 
the seashore, read Homer and Ossian with the 
salt air on his cheeks, and shout their winged 
words to the winds and waves. The book he 



WALT WHITMAN 365 

knew best was the Bible, the prophetical parts of 
which stirred in him a vague desire to be the bard 
or prophet of his own time and country. 

Then, at the right moment, he read Emerson. 

Ill 

I was extremely interested to know how far the 
influence of our greatest writer had been felt in 
the making of a book which, without being at all 
imitative, was pitched in the very highest key of 
self-reliance. In his letter to Emerson, printed 
in the second edition of Leaves of Grass, speak- 
ing of " Individuality, that new moral American 
continent," Whitman had averred : "Those shores 
you found ; I say, you led the States there, — 
have led me there." And it seemed hardly possi- 
ble that the first determined attempt to cast into 
literature a complete man, with all his pride and 
passions, should have been made by one whose 
feet were not already firmly planted on "those 
shores." Then there was the significant fact of 
his having mailed a copy of his first edition to 
Emerson. 

Whitman talked frankly on the subject, that 
day on Prospect Hill, and told how he became 
acquainted with Emerson's writings. He was at 
work as a carpenter (his father's trade before him) 
in Brooklyn, building with his own hands and on 



366 MY OWN STORY 

his own account small and very plain houses for 
laboring men ; as soon as one was finished and 
sold, beginning another, — houses of two or three 
rooms. This was in 1854; he was then thirty- 
five years old. He lived at home with his mother ; 
going off to his work in the morning and return- 
ing at night, carrying his dinner pail like any com- 
mon laborer. Along with his pail he usually 
carried a book, between which and his solitary 
meal he would divide his nooning. Once the 
book chanced to be a volume of Emerson ; and 
from that time he took with him no other writer. 
His half-formed purpose, his vague aspirations, 
all that had lain smouldering so long within him, 
waiting to be fired, rushed into flame at the touch 
of those electric words, — the words that burn in 
the prose-poem Nature, and in the essays on 
Spiritual Laws, The Over- Soul, Self-Reliance. 
The sturdy carpenter in his working-day garb, 
seated on his pile of boards ; a poet in that rude 
disguise, as yet but dimly conscious of his powers ; 
in one hand the sandwich put up for him by his 
good mother, his other hand holding open the 
volume that revealed to him his greatness and 
his destiny, — this is the picture which his simple 
narrative called up, that Sunday so long ago, and 
which has never faded from my memory. 

He freely admitted that he could never have 



WALT WHITMAN 367 

written his poems if he had not first " come to 
himself," and that Emerson helped him to "find 
himself." I asked him if he thought he would 
have come to himself without that help. He 
said, " Yes, but it would have taken longer." 
And he used this characteristic expression : " I 
was simmering, simmering, simmering ; Emerson 
brought me to a boil." 

It was in that summer of 1854, while he was 
still at work upon his houses, that he began the 
Leaves of Grass, which he wrote, rewrote, and 
re-rewrote (to quote again his own words), and 
afterward set in type with his own hand. 

I make this statement thus explicit because a 
question of profound personal and literary inter- 
est is involved, and because it is claimed by some 
of the later friends of Whitman that he wrote his 
first Leaves of Grass before he had read Emerson. 
When they urge his own authority for their con- 
tention, I can only reply that he told me distinctly 
the contrary, when his memory was fresher. 

The Emersonian influence is often clearly 
traceable in Whitman's early poems ; seldom in 
the later. It is in the first line of the very first 
poem in which he struck the keynote of his defi- 
ant chant : " I celebrate myself." And at times 
Emerson's identical thought reappears with slight 
change in the Leaves. Two or three instances 



368 MY OWN STORY 

out of many will suffice. Emerson wrote : " Sup- 
pose you should contradict yourself, what then ? 
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing 
to do." Whitman says : — 

" Do I contradict myself ? 
Very well, then, I contradict myself, 
I am large, I contain multitudes." 

Emerson : " Shall I skulk and dodge and duck, 
with my unreasonable apologies ? " Whitman : — 

" I see that the elementary laws never apologize, . . . 
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough." 

Emerson : " The unstable estimates of men 
crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth 
as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the 
moon." Whitman: — 

u Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I 
shall follow, 
As the waters follow the moon, silently, with fluid steps, any- 
where around the globe." 

Yet the form Whitman chose for his message 
was as independent of Emerson's as of all other 
literary forms whatsoever. Outwardly, his un- 
rhymed and unmeasured lines resemble those of 
Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy ; but in no other 
way are they akin to those colorless platitudes. 
To the music of the opera, for which he had a 
passion, more than to anything else, was due his 



WALT WHITMAN 369 

emancipation from what he called the "ballad- 
style " of poetry, by which he meant poetry ham- 
pered by rhyme and metre. " But for the opera," 
he declared, that day on Prospect Hill, "I could 
never have written Leaves of Grass." — 

Whitman was at that time a man of striking 
personal appearance, as indeed he always was : 
fully six feet tall, and large proportionally ; slow 
of movement, and inclined to walk with a loun- 
ging gait, which somebody has likened to an " ele- 
phantine roll." He wore his shirt collar open at 
the throat, exposing his hairy chest, in decidedly 
unconventional fashion. His necktie was drawn 
into a loose knot, or hung free, with serpentine 
ends coiled away somewhere in his clothing. He 
was scrupulously neat in person, — " never dressed 
in black, always dressed freely and clean in strong 
clothes," according to his own description of him- 
self ; head massive, complexion florid-tawny, fore- 
head seamed with wrinkles, which, along with his 
premature grayness, made him look much older 
than he was. Mr. Howells, in his First Impres- 
sions of Literary New York, describes a meeting 
with him a few months later, that same year 
(i860), and calls him "the benign old man." 
Whitman was at that time forty-one. 

I did not see him again for three years and a 
half ; meanwhile the Civil War was raging, and 



370 MY OWN STORY 

in 1862 he went to the front to nurse his brother, 
Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Whitman, who had 
been wounded at Fredericksburg. This was the 
beginning of his hospital work, which became so 
important an episode in his life. 

IV 

In the latter part of November, 1863, a fortu- 
nate circumstance placed me in friendly relations 
with Hon. Salmon P. Chase, and I became a guest 
in his Washington home. He was then at the 
summit of his fame and power as Secretary of the 
Treasury, in which office his eminent ability, his 
integrity of character, and his immense popularity 
as the father of the "greenbacks" and the suc- 
cessful manager of the Nation's finances in the 
crisis of its greatest peril, had made him, next to 
President Lincoln, the most important personage 
in the government. 

In person, the Secretary was a grand specimen 
of massively compact manhood, perfectly erect, 
over six feet tall (six feet one, I think he told 
me) ; always decorously dressed, his imposing 
figure commonly set off by a well-fitting frock 
coat ; features full and strong, complexion light, 
face smooth-shaven, and eyes light and beaming, 
with that peculiar fullness of the eyeball that 
denotes near-sightedness. He was august in the 




HON. SALMON P. CHASE 



SECRETARY CHASE 37 i 

true sense, sometimes austere ; and I can under- 
stand why some who did not know him under 
favorable conditions should have thought him 
cold-hearted. He was surprisingly unreserved 
in his expressions of opinion regarding public 
measures and public men, not even sparing the 
President. His frankness of speech was habitual, 
and undoubtedly gained him some enemies. I 
remember two of his political friends coming in, 
one evening, to present to him a young man who 
had made himself the hero of the hour by writ- 
ing a partisan article of a particularly slashing 
character. The Secretary received him kindly, 
but instead of praising his performance, said of it 
simply — "I thought it very indiscreet," — with 
a smile like a flower above a thorn. The thorn 
pierced, nevertheless, and I noticed that the 
young man went away with a diminished admira- 
tion of the Secretary. 

I saw a great deal of him during my stay, — 
at his own table, where there were often noted 
guests, in his private office, and at the Treasury 
Department ; and I was frequently his companion 
in before-breakfast walks. He was not distin- 
guished for wit, but his conversation, always enter- 
taining, was often embroidered with a playfulness 
which the background of his stately presence set 
off. At the breakfast table one morning he read 



372 MY OWN STORY 

aloud, with an amusement we all shared, a ridicu- 
lous newspaper account of his being locked in his 
office with his report, which he was then writing, 
and inaccessible even to President Lincoln. 

I said, " They should add that when you go to 
walk you have a guard." 

He glanced at my slender goatee and quoted, — 

" ' A whiskered pandour and a fierce hussar.' " 

He strongly disapproved of the President's 
habit of telling all sorts of stories, to all sorts of 
people, on all sorts of occasions ; yet he himself 
sometimes repeated a Lincoln story with good 
effect. One evening (my note-book says Dec. i) he 
came in to dinner after attending a cabinet meet- 
ing at which the President submitted to his heads 
of departments the draft of his message to Con- 
gress, and having read it, invited their comments. 
For some time — he said in relating the incident 
— nobody spoke. Then he broke the awkward 
silence by suggesting an amendment ; whereupon 
Seward proposed another. 

" Governor," said Lincoln, turning to his Sec- 
retary of State, " you remind me of a Blue Grass 
farmer who had a black man and a fine yoke of 
oxen. One day the black man came running to 
the house ; — ' Massa', says he, ' dat ar off ox, 
him dead. T'udder too. T'ought I would n't tell 



CHASE AND O'CONNOR 373 

you bofe tuh oncet, fear you could n't stand 
'em ! ' " 

Among the noted guests I remember meeting 
at the Chase house that season were Senator 
Sherman, Speaker Colfax, Beecher, Greeley, and 
General Garfield, a frequent and familiar visitor. 
It was during my stay that the Secretary's ac- 
complished daughter, Kate Chase Sprague, of 
whom he was exceedingly fond and proud, and 
her millionaire bridegroom, the youthful Senator 
from Rhode Island, returned from the famous 
wedding tour that followed their recent brilliant 
but ill-starred marriage, and took up their abode 
beneath the paternal roof. 



I had at that time few acquaintances in Wash- 
ington. One of the most prized of these was 
William Douglas O'Connor. He had turned aside 
from literature, in which we who knew him in the 
flower of his youthful promise had believed him 
destined to excel, and entered a department of the 
government, — one of those vast mausoleums in 
which so many talents, small and great, have been 
buried, and brave ambitions have turned quietly 
to dust. Chase had himself, in his younger days, 
sought a humble position in the Treasury ; and it 
is quite possible that, had he obtained it, nothing 



374 M Y OWN STORY 

would ever have turned him out of that tomb, ex- 
cept the necessity of making room for some other 
incumbent, under the hoary old spoils system, to 
which, with all its evils, we must also accredit the 
good sometimes resulting from such enforced lib- 
erations. In the day of his greatness the Sec- 
retary was not averse to being reminded of this 
possibility, smiling sternly once, as I recall, when 
a younger person at his table pictured him as a 
clerk grown gray in the service, meekly receiving 
his orders, — " Chase, do this ! " " Chase, attend to 
that ! " — in the department where, having reached 
it by other routes, and by the steps of statesman- 
ship, he was then autocrat. 

O'Connor's first employment was in the Trea- 
sury ; in the Treasury, also, when I first knew him, 
was that other valiant friend of Whitman's, John 
Burroughs, who, fortunately for himself and his 
readers, escaped O'Connor's fate. When O'Con- 
nor left the Treasury it was to enter the Light- 
house Board, where he became head clerk, and 
sat like a spider in the midst of his web, a coast 
light at the end of each invisible line, hundreds or 
thousands of miles away. In those useful radia- 
tions the beams of his genius became too deeply 
immersed to shine otherwise than fitfully in what I 
always deemed his proper sphere. Except to take 
up now and then the championship of some cause 



WHITMAN AND O'CONNOR 375 

that appealed to his chivalrous nature, like that of 
Delia Bacon's Shakespearean heresy, or Elizabeth 
Akers' authorship of Rock me to Sleep, or Whit- 
man and his Leaves of Grass, at a time when the 
man and his book were in the lowest depths of 
that opprobrium from which they were so slow to 
emerge, — but for occasional efforts of this sort, 
the most eloquent of pens became subdued to the 
daily routine of office drudgery. He was not 
learned, in an academic sense, but he was a rapid 
and omnivorous reader, with an astonishing mem- 
ory, which when he wrote became an illumined 
arsenal of literary allusion. It seemed as if such 
weapons of language and rhetoric as he possessed 
should have made him our foremost knight of let- 
ters, an American Hugo. Perhaps he was con- 
scious of some defect of temperament that unfitted 
him for such a career. A certain heat and fury 
seemed necessary to move his mind to creative 
activity. There was in everything he wrote a 
tendency to excess, which marred his remarkable 
novel, Harrington, and in his polemic papers be- 
trayed him into extravagances of over-statement. 
He and Burroughs were the two earliest and 
ablest champions of Walt Whitman's work ; but 
their writings on that theme presented the widest 
possible contrast : Burroughs's Walt Whitman as 
Poet and Person being calm, unhurried, candid, 



376 MY OWN STORY 

judicial ; The Good Gray Poet of O'Connor, all 
aflame with wit and scorn and passionate elo- 
quence. 

O'Connor was then in the prime of his powers, 
strikingly handsome, with a winning graciousness 
of manner that gave to his gay volubility an in- 
describable charm. I knew of his intimacy with 
Whitman, and when one day I found him at his 
office, and had answered his many questions, tell- 
ing him where I was domiciled, one of the first I 
asked in return was, "Where's Walt?" — the 
familiar name by which Whitman was known to 
his friends. 

"What a chance ! " said O'Connor, in his ardent 
way. " Walt is here in Washington, living close 
by you, within a stone's throw of the Secretary's 
door. Come to my house on Sunday evening, and 
I will have him there to meet you." 

VI 

On seeing him again at O'Connor's, I found 
Whitman but little changed, except that he was 
more trimly attired, wearing a loosely fitting but 
quite elegant suit of black, — yes, black at last ! 
He was in the best of spirits ; and I remember 
with what a superb and joyous pace he swung 
along the street, between O'Connor and me, as 
we walked home with him, after ten o'clock. 



WHITMAN AND O'CONNOR 377 

Diagonally opposite to Chase's great house, on 
the corner of E and 6th streets, stood one of those 
old wooden buildings which then and for some 
years afterwards lingered among the new and 
handsome blocks rising around them, and made 
the " city of magnificent distances " also a city of 
astonishing architectural contrasts. In the fine, 
large mansion, sumptuously furnished, cared for 
by sleek and silent colored servants, and thronged 
by distinguished guests, dwelt the great states- 
man ; in the old tenement opposite, in a bare and 
desolate back room, up three flights of stairs, quite 
alone, lived the poet. Walt led the way up those 
dreary stairs, partly in darkness, found the key- 
hole of a door which he unlocked and opened, 
scratched a match, and welcomed us to his garret. 

Garret it literally was, containing hardly any 
more furniture than a bed, a cheap pine table, and 
a little sheet-iron stove in which there was no fire. 
A window was open, and it was a December night. 
But Walt, clearing a chair or two of their litter of 
newspapers, invited us to sit down and stop awhile, 
with as simple and sweet hospitality as if he had 
been offering us the luxuries of the great mansion 
across the square. 

Sit down we did (O'Connor on the bed, as I 
remember), and " drank delight of battle " over 
books, the principal subjects being Shakespeare 



378 MY OWN STORY 

and Walt's own Leaves of Grass. Over Shakes- 
peare it was a sort of triangular combat, — O'Con- 
nor maintaining the Baconian theory of the 
authorship of the plays, and Walt joining with me 
in attacking that chimera. On the other hand, I 
agreed with O'Connor in his estimate of Lear and 
Hamlet and Othello, which Walt belittled, prefer- 
ring the historical plays, and placing Richard II. 
foremost; although he thought all the plays prepos- 
terously overrated. Of his own poems ("pomes" 
he called them) he spoke modestly, listening with 
interest to frank criticisms of them (which he 
always had from me), and disclaiming the pro- 
found hidden meanings O'Connor was inclined to 
read into some of them. Ordinarily inert and slow 
of speech, on occasions like this his large and gen- 
erous nature became suffused with a magnificent 
glow, which gave one some idea of the heat and 
momentum that went to the making of his truly 
great poems ; just as his sluggish moods seemed 
to account for so much of his labored, unleavened 
work. 

O'Connor was a man of unfailing eloquence, 
whom it was always delightful to listen to, even 
when the rush of his enthusiasm carried him be- 
yond the bounds of discretion, as it did in the 
Bacon-Shakespeare business. Whitman's reason- 
ing powers were not remarkable ; he did not im- 




WILLIAM D. O'CONNOR 



WALT WHITMAN 379 

press me, then or at any time, as a great intellect ; 
but he was original, intuitive, a seer, and his im- 
mense and genial personality gave an interest to 
everything he said. In my enjoyment of such 
high discourse, I forgot the cheerless garret, the 
stove in which there was no fire, the window that 
remained open (Walt was a " fresh-air fiend "), and 
my own freezing feet (we all kept on our over- 
coats). I also forgot that I was a guest at the 
great house across the quadrangle, and that I was 
unprovided with a latch key, — a fact of which I 
was reminded with rather startling unpleasantness, 
when I left O'Connor at the foot of Walt's stairs, 
hurried to the Secretary's door, I know not how 
long after midnight, and found myself locked out. 
All was still and dark within, except that I could 
see a light left burning low for me in my own 
chamber, a tantalizing reminder of the comfort I 
had exchanged for the bleak, deserted streets. 
My embarrassment was relieved when I reflected 
that in those wild war times the Secretary was 
prepared to receive dispatches at any hour of the 
night. I rang boldly, as if I had been a messen- 
ger bearing tidings of a nation's fate. The vesti- 
bule gas was quickly turned up, and a sleepy- 
looking colored boy let me in. 



3 8o MY OWN STORY 

VII 

Two mornings after this I went by appointment 
to call on Whitman in his garret. " Don't come 
before ten o'clock,'' he had warned me; and it was 
after ten when I mounted his three flights and 
knocked at the door of his room, — his terrible 
room, as I termed it in notes taken at the time. 

I found him partly dressed, and preparing his 
own breakfast. There was a fire in the sheet-iron 
stove, — the open door showed a few coals, — and 
he was cutting slices of bread from a baker's loaf 
with his jackknife, getting them ready for toasting. 
The smallest of tin teakettles simmering on the 
stove, a bowl and spoon, and a covered tin cup 
used as a teapot comprised, with the aforesaid use- 
ful jackknife, his entire outfit of visible housekeep- 
ing utensils. His sugar bowl was a brown paper 
bag. His butter plate was another piece of brown 
paper, the same coarse wrapping in which he had 
brought home his modest lump from the corner 
grocery. His cupboard was an oblong pine box, 
set up a few feet from the floor, opening outward, 
with the bottom against the wall ; the two sides, 
one above the other, made very good shelves. 

I toasted his bread for him on the end of a 
sharpened stick ; he buttered the slices with his 
jackknife, and poured his tea at a corner of the 



WALT WHITMAN 381 

table cleared for that purpose of its litter of books 
and newspapers; and while he breakfasted we 
talked. 

His last slice buttered and eaten, he burned his 
butter plate (showing the advantage of having no 
dishes to wash), and set his bag of sugar in the 
cupboard, along with his small parcel of tea ; then 
he brought out from his trunk a package of manu- 
script poems, which he read to me, and which 
we discussed, for the next hour. 

These were his war pieces, the Drum-Taps, then 
nearly ready for publication. He read them un- 
affectedly, with force and feeling, and in a voice 
of rich but not resonant tones. I was interested 
not alone in the poems, but also in his own inter- 
pretation of the irregular yet often not unrhythmi- 
cal lines. I did not find in them anything compar- 
able with the greatly moving passages in the earlier 
Leaves : they were more literary in their tone, 
showing here and there lapses into the conven- 
tional poetic diction, which he had flung off so 
haughtily in the surge of the early impulse. They 
contained, however, some fine, effective, patriotic, 
and pathetic chants ; and were, moreover, entirely 
free from the old offenses against propriety. I 
hoped to be able to persuade some good Boston 
house to publish the volume, but found, when I 
came to make the attempt, that no firm would 



382 MY OWN STORY 

undertake it ; and it remained in manuscript until 
1865, when Whitman issued it at his own expense. 1 

From that morning I saw him almost every day 
or evening as long as I remained in Washington. 
He was then engaged in his missionary work, in 
the hospitals ; talking to the sick and wounded 
soldiers, reading to them, writing letters for them, 
cheering and comforting them sometimes by 
merely sitting silent beside their cots, and per- 
haps soothing a pallid brow with his sympathetic 
hand. 

He took me two or three times to the great 
Armory Square Hospital, where I observed his 
methods of work. I was surprised to learn that 
he never read to the patients any of his own com- 
positions, and that not one of those I talked with 
knew him for a poet, or for anybody but plain 
" Mr. Whitman." I cannot help speaking of one 
poor fellow, who had asked to see me because 
Whitman had told him I was the author of one 
of the pieces he liked to hear read, and who 
talked to me with tears in his eyes of the comfort 
Whitman's visits had given him. The pathos of 
the situation was impressed upon me by the cir- 

1 Some time afterwards I had the satisfaction of engaging a 
Boston bookseller to permit his imprint to be placed upon the 
title-page of Whitman's Democratic Vistas, which was, however, 
like the Drum-Taps, published at the author's expense. 



WHITMAN AND CHASE 383 

cumstance that his foot was to be amputated 
within an hour. 

Whitman always carried into the wards a few 
fruits and delicacies, which he distributed with 
the approval of the surgeons and nurses. He 
also circulated, among those who were well enough 
to read, books and periodicals sent to him for that 
purpose by friends in the North. Sometimes he 
gave paper and envelopes and postage stamps, 
and he was never without some good tobacco, to 
be dispensed in special cases. He never used 
tobacco himself, but he had compassion for those 
who had been deprived of that solace, as he had 
for all forms of suffering. He wrote Washington 
letters that winter for the New York Times, the 
income from which, together with contributions 
from Northern friends, enabled him to carry on his 
hospital work. 

VIII 

Whitman and Chase were the two men I saw 
most of, at that time, in Washington. That I should 
know them both familiarly, passing often from 
the stately residence of the one to the humble 
lodging of the other, seemed to me a simple and 
natural thing at the time : great men both, each 
nobly proportioned in body and stalwart in charac- 
ter, and each invincibly true to his own ideals and 
purposes : near neighbors, and yet very antipodes 



384 MY OWN STORY 

in their widely contrasted lives, — one princely in 
his position, dispensing an enormous patronage, 
the slenderest rill of which would have made life 
green for the other, struggling along the arid 
ways of an honorable poverty. Both greatly am- 
bitious : Chase devoutly believing it his right, and 
likewise his destiny, to succeed Lincoln in the 
presidency ; Whitman aspiring to be for all time 
the poet of democracy and emancipated manhood, 
— his simple prayer being, " Give me to speak 
beautiful words ; take all the rest ! " One a con- 
scientious High Churchman, reverencing tradition, 
and finding ceremonious worship so helpful and 
solacing that (as he once said to me earnestly) he 
would have become a Roman Catholic, if he could 
have brought himself to accept the Romish dog- 
mas ; the other believing in the immanent spirit 
and an ever-living inspiration, and as free from all 
forms and doctrines as Abraham alone with Deity 
in the desert. For the statesman I had a very 
great admiration and respect ; for the poet I felt 
a powerful attraction, something like a younger 
brother's love ; and I confess a sweet and secret 
joy in sometimes stealing away from the company 
of polished and eminent people in the great house, 
and crossing over to Walt in his garret, or going 
to meet him at O'Connor's. 

I thought no man more than Whitman merited 



WHITMAN AND CHASE 385 

recognition and assistance from the government, 
and I once asked him if he would accept a position 
in one of the departments. He answered frankly 
that he would. But he believed it improbable 
that he could get an appointment, although (as he 
mentioned casually) he had letters of recommenda- 
tion from Emerson. 

There were two of these, and they were espe- 
cially interesting to me, as I knew something of 
the disturbed relations existing between the two 
men, on account of Whitman's indiscreet use of 
Emerson's famous letter to him, acknowledging 
the gift copy of the first Leaves of Grass. Whit- 
man not only published that letter without the 
writer's authority, but printed an extract from it, 
in conspicuous gold, on the back of his second 
edition, — "I greet you at the beginning of a 
great career ; " thus making Emerson in some 
sense an indorser not only of the first poems, but 
of others he had never seen, and which he would 
have preferred never to see in print. This was an 
instance of bad taste, but not of intentional bad 
faith, on the part of Whitman. Talking of it 
once, he said, in his grand way : " I supposed 
the letter was meant to be blazoned ; I regarded 
it as the chart of an emperor." But Emerson had 
no thought of acting the imperial part toward so 
adventurous a voyager. I remember hearing him 



386 MY OWN STORY 

allude to the incident shortly after that second 
edition appeared. Speaking of the attention the 
new poet was attracting, he mentioned an English- 
man who had come to this country bringing a 
letter to Whitman from Monckton Milnes (after- 
ward Lord Houghton). "But," said Emerson, 
" hearing that Whitman had not used me well in 
the matter of letters, he did not deliver it." He 
had afterwards made a strenuous effort to induce 
Whitman to omit certain objectionable passages 
from his edition of i860, and failed. And I knew 
that the later writings of Whitman interested him 
less and less. " No more evidence of getting into 
form," he once remarked, — a singular comment, 
it may be thought, from one whose own chief 
defect as a writer seemed to be an imperfect 
mastery of form. 

With these things in mind, I read eagerly the 
two letters from Emerson recommending Whit- 
man for a government appointment. One was 
addressed to Senator Sumner; the other, I was 
surprised and pleased to find, to Secretary Chase. 
I had but a slight acquaintance with Sumner, and 
the letter to him I handed back. The one written 
to Chase I wished to retain, in order to deliver it to 
the Secretary with my own hands, and with such 
furthering words as I could summon in so good 
a cause. Whitman expressed small hope in the 



WHITMAN AND CHASE 387 

venture, and stipulated that in case of the failure 
he anticipated, I should bring back the letter. 

As we left the breakfast table, the next morning, 
I followed the Secretary into his private office, 
where, after some pleasant talk, I remarked that I 
was about to overstep a rule I had laid down for 
myself on entering his house. He said, " What 
rule ? " I replied, " Never to repay your hospi- 
tality by asking of you any official favor." He 
said I need n't have thought it necessary to make 
that rule, for he was always glad to do for his 
friends such things as he was constantly called 
upon to do for strangers. Then I laid before him 
the Whitman business. He was evidently im- 
pressed by Emerson's letter, and he listened with 
interest to what I had to say of the man and his 
patriotic work. But he was troubled. " I am 
placed," he said, "in a very embarrassing position. 
It would give me great pleasure to grant this 
request, out of my regard for Mr. Emerson ; " and 
he was gracious enough to extend the courtesy of 
this " regard " to me, also. But then he went on 
to speak of Leaves of Grass as a book that had 
made the author notorious ; and I found that he 
judged it, as all but a very few persons then did, 
not independently, on its own merits, but by con- 
ventional standards of taste and propriety. He 
had understood that the writer was a rowdy, — 



388 MY OWN STORY 

" one of the roughs," — according to his descrip- 
tions of himself. 

I said, "He is as quiet a gentleman in his 
manners and conversation as any guest who 
enters your door." 

He replied : " I am bound to believe what you 
say ; but his writings have given him a bad repute, 
and I should not know what sort of a place to give 
to such a man," — with more to the same purpose. 

I respected his decision, much as I regretted it ; 
and, persuaded that nothing I could urge would in- 
duce him to change it, I said I would relieve him 
of all embarrassment in the business by withdraw- 
ing the letter. He glanced again at the signature, 
hesitated, and made this surprising response, — 

" I have nothing of Emerson's in his handwrit- 
ing, and I shall be glad to keep this." 

I thought it hardly fair, but as the letter was 
addressed to him, and had passed into his hands, 
I could n't well reclaim it against his wishes. 

Whitman seemed really to have formed some 
hopes of the success of my mission, after I had 
undertaken it, as he showed when I went to give 
him an account of my interview with the Sec- 
retary. He took the disappointment philosophi- 
cally, but indulged in some sardonic remarks about 
Chase and his department, regarding which some 
choice scandals were then afloat. " He is right," 



WHITMAN AND CHASE 389 

he said, " in preserving his saints from contamina- 
tion by a man like me ! " But I stood up for the 
Secretary, as, with the Secretary, I had stood up 
for Whitman. Those very scandals had no doubt 
rendered him cautious in making appointments. 
And could any one be blamed for taking the 
writer of Leaves of Grass at his word when, in 
his defiance of conventionality, he had described 
himself as "rowdyish," "disorderly," and worse ? 
" ' I cock my hat as I please, indoors and out,' " 
I quoted. Walt laughed, and said, " I don't blame 
him ; it 's about what I expected." He asked for 
the letter, and showed his amused disgust when 
I explained how it had been pocketed by the Sec- 
retary. 1 

1 A brief memorandum of this interview, which Whitman made 
in his diary, with characteristic carelessness in the formation of 
sentences, appears, in facsimile of his handwriting, in a book by 
Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman the Man. The book I 
have never seen ; but a friend sends me a printed copy of the 
memorandum. It is dated Dec. 11, and is as follows : 

" This forenoon Mr. Trowbridge has been with me, — he had 
a talk yesterday with S. P. Chase, the secretary of the treasury, 
about me ; presented Emerson's letter to Mr. C. — he said some 
commonplaces about wishing to oblige R. W. E. & Mr. Trow- 
bridge ; — then said he considered Leaves of Grass a very bad 
book, & he did not know how he could possibly bring its author 
into the government service, especially if he put him in contact 
with gentlemen employed in the bureaus, — did not think he 
would be warranted in doing so, — he considered the author of 
Leaves of Grass in the light of a decidedly disreputable person. 



390 MY OWN STORY 

I should probably have had no difficulty in 
securing the appointment if I had withheld Em- 
erson's letter, and called my friend simply Mr. 
Whitman, or Mr. Walter Whitman, without men- 
tioning Leaves of Grass. But I felt that the Sec- 
retary, if he was to appoint him, should know just 
whom he was appointing ; and Whitman was the 
last person in the world to shirk the responsibility 
of having written an audacious book. 

Whether the same candor was used in procur- 
ing for him a clerkship in the Interior Depart- 
ment, to which he was appointed later, I do not 
know. He had been for some time performing 
the duties of that position, without exciting any 
other comment than that he performed them well, 
when a new Secretary (James Harlan), coming in 
under Johnson, and discovering that the grave 
and silent man at a certain desk was the author 
of a reprehensible book, dismissed him uncere- 
moniously. 

IX 

It was this incident that called out from O'Con- 
nor his brilliant monograph, The Good Gray Poet, 
in which Whitman was so eloquently vindicated, 
and the Secretary received so terrible a scourging. 

Mr. T. mentioned to him my employment for a year past among 
the wounded and sick soldiers, — it did not seem to make any 
difference." 



WALT WHITMAN 39 1 

What seemed for a time unmitigated ill fortune 
proved to be a very good thing for Whitman. He 
was soon after appointed to a better place in the 
office of the Attorney-General, and he himself 
used to say that it was O'Connor's defense that 
turned the tide in his favor ; meaning the tide of 
criticism and public opinion, which had until then 
set so tremendously against him. O'Connor's 
pamphlet was followed, two years later (1867), by 
John Burroughs's Walt Whitman as Poet and 
Person. Countless other publications on the 
same inexhaustible theme have appeared since, — 
reviews, biographies, personal recollections, studies 
of Walt Whitman ; a recent Study by Burroughs 
himself ; volumes of eulogy and exegesis, commen- 
tary and controversy, wise and foolish ; a whole 
library of Whitman literature, in English, French, 
German, and other languages. There are Walt 
Whitman Societies and Fellowships, and at least 
one periodical is devoted largely to Whitmanana. 
I saw Whitman many times in Washington, 
after that memorable season of 1863; again when 
he came to Boston to deliver his lecture on Lin- 
coln ; and lastly in his Camden home, where the 
feet of many pilgrims mounted the steps that led 
to his door, and where an infirm but serene old 
age closed the " great career " Emerson had been 
the first to acclaim. 



39 2 MY OWN STORY 

All this time I have watched with deep interest 
the growth of his influence and the change in 
public opinion regarding him. To me, now almost 
the sole survivor among his earliest friends and 
adherents, wonderful indeed seems that change 
since the first thin quarto edition of the Leaves 
appeared, in 1855. If noticed at all by the critics, 
it was, with rare exceptions, to be ridiculed and 
reviled ; and Emerson himself suffered abuse for 
pronouncing it " the most extraordinary piece of 
wit and wisdom America had yet contributed." 
Even so accomplished a man of letters as James 
Russell Lowell saw in it nothing but common- 
place tricked out with eccentricity. I remember 
walking with him once in Cambridge, when he 
pointed out a doorway sign, " Groceries," with the 
letters set zigzag, to produce a bizarre effect. 
" That," said he, " is Walt Whitman, — with very 
common goods inside." It was not until his 
writings became less prophetical, and more con- 
sciously literary in their aim, that Lowell and 
scholars of his class began to see something 
besides oddity in Whitman, and his popularity 

widened. 

X 

That such a change took place in his writings 
Whitman himself was aware. Once when I con- 
fessed to him that nothing in the later poems 



WALT WHITMAN 393 

moved me like some of the great passages in the 
earlier editions, he replied : "lam not surprised. 
I do not suppose I shall ever again have the affla- 
tus I had in writing the first Leaves of Grass." 
One evening he was reading to O'Connor and me 
some manuscript pieces, inviting our comments, 
when he came to the line, — 

" No poem proud I, chanting, bring to thee." 

" Why do you say ' poem proud ' ? " I asked. 
"You never would have said that in the first 
Leaves of Grass." 

"What would I have said ?." he inquired. 

" ' I bring to you no proud poem,' " I replied. 

O'Connor cried out, in his vehement way, 
"That 's so, Walt, — that 's so ! " 

" I think you are right," Walt admitted, and he 
read over the line, which I looked to see changed 
when the poem came to be printed ; but it ap- 
peared without alteration. It occurs in Lo, Vic- 
tress on the Peaks, an address to Liberty, for which 
word he uses the Spanish " Libertad " — another 
thing with which I found fault, and which I hoped 
to see changed. I will say here that I do not be- 
lieve Whitman ever changed a line or a word to 
please anybody. In answer to criticism, he would 
at times maintain his point ; at others, he would 
answer, in his tolerant, candid way, " I guess you 



394 MY OWN STORY 

are right," or, " I rather think it is so ;" but even 
when apparently convinced, he would stand by his 
faults. His use of words and phrases from for- 
eign languages, which he began in his 1856 edi- 
tion, and which became a positive offense in that 
of i860, he continued in the face of all remon- 
strance, and would not even correct errors into 
which his ignorance of those languages had be- 
trayed him. In one of his most ambitious poems, 
Chanting the Square Deific, he translates our good 
English "Holy Spirit" into "Santa Spirita," 
meant for Italian ; but in that language the word 
for "spirit" is masculine, and the form should 
have been " Spirito Santo," with the adjective cor- 
respondingly masculine. William Rossetti, who 
edited a volume of selections from Leaves of 
Grass for the British public, pointed this out in 
a letter to Whitman, who, in talking of it with 
me, acknowledged the blunder ; yet through some 
perversity he allowed it to pass on into subsequent 
editions. 

In these editions Whitman showed that he was 
not averse to making changes ; he was always re- 
arranging the contents, mixing up the early with 
the later poems, and altering titles, to the confu- 
sion of the faithful. Now and then he would in- 
terject into some familiar passage of the old pieces 
a phrase or a line in his later manner, strangely 



WALT WHITMAN 39S 

discordant to an ear of any discrimination. A good 
example is this, where to the original lines, — 

" My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, 

The Lord will be there, and wait till I come, on perfect terms," — 

he adds this third line, — 

" The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine, will be 
there," — 

a tawdry patch on the strong original homespun. 
The French " rendezvous " in the first line is legit- 
imate, having been adopted into our language 
because it expresses something for which we have 
no other single word, and Whitman would be a 
benefactor had he enriched our vernacular in that 
way. But " camerado " — of which he seems to 
have become very fond, using it wherever he had 
a chance — is neither French (camarade) nor 
Spanish (camarada), nor Portuguese, nor Italian, 
nor anything else, to my mind, but a malformed 
substitute for our good and sufficient word "com- 
rade." " Lover true," like "poem proud," is of a 
piece with those "stock poetical touches" which 
he used to say he had great trouble in leaving 
out of his first Leaves, but which here, as in other 
places, he went back and deliberately wrote into 
them. 

For another set of changes to which I objected 
he was able to give a reason, though a poor one. 



396 MY OWN STORY 

In the Poem of Faces, " the old face of the mother 
of many children " has this beautiful setting : — 

" Lulled and late is the smoke of the Sabbath morning, 
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, 
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild cherry, and the cat-brier 
under them." 

" Smoke of the Sabbath morning " he altered, 
after the first two editions, to " smoke of the First 
Day morning." In like manner, elsewhere, "the 
field-sprouts of April and May " was changed to 
"the field-sprouts of Fourth Month and Fifth 
Month ; " " the short last daylight of December '■ 
to "the short last daylight of Twelfth Month," 
and so on, — all our good old pagan names for the 
months and days, wherever they occurred in the 
original Leaves, being reduced to numbers, in 
plain Quaker fashion, or got rid of in some other 
way. " I mind how we lay in June " became " I 
mind how we once lay ; " and 

" The exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in May" — 

a most exquisite and most delicate line, it may be 
observed in passing — was made to read, not " new 
moon in Fifth Month " (that would have been a 
little too bad), but "new moon in spring." I 
thought all of these alterations unfortunate, except 
possibly the last ; nearly all involving a sacrifice 
of euphony or of atmosphere in the lines. When 



WALT WHITMAN 397 

I remonstrated against what seemed an affecta- 
tion, he told me that he was brought up among 
Quakers ; but I considered that too narrow a 
ground for the throwing out of words in common 
use among all English-speaking peoples except a 
single sect. To my mind, it was another proof 
that in matters of taste and judgment he was 
extremely fallible, and capable of doing unwise 
and wayward things for the sake of a theory or of 
a caprice. 

In one important particular he changed, if not 
his theory, at least his practice. After the edition 
of i860 he became reserved upon the one subject 
tabooed in polite society, the free treatment of 
which he had declared essential to his scheme of 
exhibiting in his poems humanity entire and 
undraped. For just six years, from 1855 to i860 
only, he illustrated that theory with arrogant 
defiance ; then no further exemplifications of it 
appeared in all his prose and verse for more than 
thirty years, or as long as he continued to write. 
It was a sudden and significant change, which 
was, however, covered from observation in the 
reshuffling of the Leaves. In thus reediting the 
earlier poems, he quietly dropped out a few of the 
most startling lines, and would, I believe, have 
canceled many more, but his pride was adamant 
to anything that seemed a concession. 



398 MY OWN STORY 

XI 

No doubt Whitman suffered some impairment 
of his mental faculties in the long years of his 
invalidism. He is said to have gone over to the 
Bacon side of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, 
and even to have accepted the Donnelly cipher. 
How confused his memory became on one sub- 
ject of paramount interest is evinced by a passage 
in his Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads, 
where he says of the beginnings of Leaves of 
Grass that, although he had "made a start be- 
fore," all might have come to naught — " almost 
positively would have come to naught " — but for 
the stimulus he received from the " sights and 
scenes" of the secession war. To make this 
more emphatic, he adds the astounding assertion, 
"Without those three or four years [1862 to 
1865], and the experiences they gave, Leaves of 
Grass would not now be existing." Whereas he 
had only to look at his title-pages to see that not 
his first, nor his second, but his third edition, 
comprising the larger and by far the most impor- 
tant part of his poetic work, was published in 
i860, months before the first gun of the war was 
fired or a single State had seceded. After this, 
we need not wonder that he forgot he had read 
Emerson before writing his first Leaves. 



WALT WHITMAN 399 

When Whitman's genius flows, his unhampered 
lines suit his purpose as no other form of verse 
could do. The thought is sometimes elusive, hid- 
ing in metaphor and suggestion, but the language 
is direct, idiomatic, swift, its torrent force and 
copiousness justifying his disregard of rhyme 
and metre ; indeed, it has often a wild, swinging 
rhythm of its own. But when no longer impelled 
by the stress of meaning and emotion, it becomes 
strained and flavorless, and, at its worst, involved, 
parenthetical, enfeebled by weak inversions. 

There are the same disturbing inequalities in 
his prose as in his verse. The preface to his first 
edition exhibits the masterful characteristics of 
his great poems; indeed, much of that preface 
made very good Leaves, when he afterwards 
rewrote it in lines and printed it as poetry. At 
its worst, his prose is lax and slovenly, or it takes 
on ruggedness to simulate strength, and jars and 
jolts like a farm wagon on stony roads. Some of 
his published letters are slipshod in their composi- 
tion, and in their disregard of capitalization and 
punctuation, almost to the verge of illiteracy. 
Had William Shakespeare left any authentic writ- 
ings as empty of thought and imagination, and 
void of literary value, as some of the Calamus let- 
ters, they would have afforded a better argument 
than any we now have against his authorship of 



4 oo MY OWN STORY 

the plays. Perhaps some future tilter at wind- 
mills will attempt to prove that the man we know 
as Walt Whitman was an uncultured impostor, 
who had obtained possession of a mass of power- 
ful but fragmentary writings by some unknown 
man of genius, which he exploited, pieced to- 
gether, and mixed up with compositions of his 
own. 

But after all deductions it remains to be un- 
equivocally affirmed that Whitman stands as a 
great original force in our literature. Art, as ex- 
emplified by such poets as Longfellow and Ten- 
nyson, he has little or none ; but in the free play 
of his power he produces the effect of an art 
beyond art. His words are often steeped in the 
very sentiment of the themes they touch, and 
suggest more than they express. He has large- 
ness of view, an all-including optimism, boundless 
love and faith. To sum all in a sentence, I should 
say that his main purpose was to bring into his 
poems Nature, with unflinching realism, — espe- 
cially Nature's divine masterpiece, Man ; and to 
demonstrate that everything in Nature and in 
Man, all that he is, feels, and observes, is worthy 
of celebration by the poet ; not in the old, selec- 
tive, artificial poetic forms, but with a freedom of 
method commensurate with Nature's own ampli- 
tude and unconstraint. It was a grand conception, 



WALT WHITMAN 401 

an intrepid revolt against the established canons 
of taste and art, a challenge and a menace to the 
greatest and most venerated names. That the 
attempt was not so foolhardy as at first appeared, 
and that it has not been altogether a failure, the 
growing interest in the man and his work suffi- 
ciently attests ; and who can say how greatly it 
might not have succeeded, if adequate judgment 
had reinforced his genius, and if his inspiration 
had continued as long as he continued to write ? 



CHAPTER XIII 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



I made acquaintance with Oliver Wendell Holmes 
soon after the Atlantic Monthly was started, 
and from that time was often in the way of meet- 
ing him at receptions, banquets, and on more 
private occasions. One of the first talks I ever 
had with him was at some gathering, I have for- 
gotten what, when, allusion being made to the 
grammatical inaccuracies of famous writers, I 
instanced the opening lines of The Prisoner of 
Chillon, — 

" My hair is gray, but not with years, 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears ; " — 

and also Byron's "There let him lay!" which 
occurs in the famous address to the ocean, in 
Childe Harold. The Autocrat remarked, in his 
quick, nervous way, " Suppose Trowbridge or 
Holmes had made those blunders ! would n't the 
critics have had a war dance ? " As he had 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 403 

already achieved a dazzling reputation, while I had 
none to speak of, this coupling of our names to- 
gether was to me, I confess, flatteringly pleasant. 

Another colloquy I recall that began less 
auspiciously. It was at an Atlantic dinner, 
where, a seat beside me becoming vacant, he 
came and occupied it. He betrayed not a little 
irritation as he began, — 

" I 've a nut to crack with you ! The critic of 
the " — no matter what publication — " says you 
can write better than I can. What do you think 
of that ? " 

I tried to parry the question with an allusion I 
thought would please him. " That must be when 
you are not writing * as funny as you can,' doc- 
tor." But he shook his head, and insisted : what 
did I really think of it ? Such a comparison 
being too absurd to be taken seriously, I re- 
plied, — 

" That 's a critic after my own heart ! If only 
all were as astute ! But here 's a scribbler in 
the " — I named the print — " who says Edmund 
Kirke can write better than I can. So what am 
I to think?" < 

Thereupon the cloud turned its silver lining. 
He laughed and said : " If you can write better 
than I, and Kirke can write better than you, then 
Kirke is the man ! We know where we are ! " 



4 04 MY OWN STORY 

At table he was unflaggingly vivacious, ready 
at repartee, as witty as Lowell without Lowell's 
audacity at punning (they called each other " Wen- 
dell" and " James," talking perhaps from one end 
of the table to the other), and, for the immediate 
moment, as wise as Emerson. Underwood, in his 
monograph on Lowell, The Poet and the Man, 
has by some lapse of memory misquoted a passage 
of words that took place between Emerson and 
Holmes at one of the early Atlantic dinners. 
The conversation was upon the orders of archi- 
tecture ; it was Emerson, not Holmes, who had 
been saying that the Egyptian was characterized 
by breadth of base, the Grecian by the adequate 
support, and the Gothic by its skyward soaring. 
Then it was Holmes, not Emerson, who flashed 
out instantly, " One is for death, one is for life, 
and one is for immortality." I did not hear this, 
but it was repeated to me at the time by one who 
did. 

At another of the Atlantic dinners, Holmes 
surpassed even himself in the sparkle and flow of 
his Autocratic dissertations. Hardly any one sus- 
pected that he had in his napkin the proofs of his 
next Autocrat paper, procured for him by one of 
the publishers of the magazine, who was present, 
and who afterwards imparted to me the secret. 

Many anecdotes illustrative of the doctor's wit 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 405 

were current in those years. I will cite but one. 
When the friends of the rival claimants of the dis- 
covery of anaesthesia were proposing monuments 
for each, Holmes suggested that all should unite 
in erecting a single memorial, with a central group 
symbolizing painless surgery, a statue of Jackson 
on one side, a statue of Morton on the other, and 
the inscription beneath : "To E(i)ther." 

II 

I never heard Holmes converse when he did 
not converse well ; and once at least I had the 
satisfaction of contributing in some degree to his 
flow of spirits. Underwood, inviting me to a sup- 
per at which the doctor was to be the guest of 
honor, begged that I would come prepared to make 
a little speech, or to read something appropriate 
to the occasion. As speech-making was always 
irksome to me, I scribbled some lines heartily 
appreciative of the Autocrat, which I carried with 
me, and read, at a call from Underwood, in a lull 
of the conversation. The next day I received a 
letter from our host, in which he wrote : " It is to 
you, more than any one else, that the success of 
last evening is due. Your poem was not only a 
pleasure in itself, but it wrought a great change 
in the guest, and brought forth all his brilliant 
powers. I never heard him talk so well." 



4 o6 MY OWN STORY 

With one of the kindest hearts, open to friends, 
and often sympathizingly helpful to strangers, he 
yet cherished a sort of Brahminical exclusiveness ; 
something in the earlier Autocrat papers even 
made you feel that he was at times too compla- 
cently conscious of a superior caste and culture. 
The tone of his writings softened and his nature 
grew ever more kindly with years. The Poet at 
the Breakfast-Table was considered less successful 
than its predecessors, the Autocrat and the Pro- 
fessor ; but there was noticeable in the later writ- 
ings an increased mellowness of flavor that com- 
pensated for any supposed falling off in the wit. 
While they were running in The Atlantic Monthly, 
I read them always eagerly in advance sheets, 
begged or borrowed from the editorial room (then 
immediately under that of Our Young Folks, in 
the building on Tremont Street), neglecting all 
other occupations for that instant indulgence. 
Very likely this was one of a happy combination 
of circumstances that caused me to see in them 
what I might look for in vain to-day ; our early 
enthusiasms are so apt to pale in the light of later 
experiences and changed conditions. Re-reading 
those papers now, thirty years and more after- 
wards, would no doubt cause me to wonder a little 
at that particular enthusiasm ; but I am glad I had 
it, since it moved me to express, in a letter to the 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 407 

doctor, my appreciation of the genial quality that 
breathed in the new series, "bathing all in the 
softest Indian Summer air." The recognition was 
probably all the more welcome to him on account 
of the disparaging criticisms the monthly num- 
bers were provoking from the press in many quar- 
ters. He wrote in reply (under date of May 12, 
1872) : " I was just sitting down to write when I 
received your letter, which gave me such singular 
pleasure that I must tell you how much happier 
I was made by it. Perhaps I wanted a pleasant 
word to give me heart for what I was doing ; at 
any rate I felt really refreshed by your kind ex- 
pressions, and very grateful. ... A few lines of 
sympathy from one, the value of whose esteem we 
know, go a great way towards repaying an author 
for his cares and labors. You may be sure that 
you obeyed a very healthy impulse when you sent 
me a note which I shall keep among the treasures 
of my correspondence." 

He was frankly fond of praise, and although 
few men of letters ever breathed that incense 
more frequently or with fuller breath, he never 
lost his amiable and sincere enjoyment of it. He 
once told me of a letter he had received from an 
ardent lady admirer, and well I recall the gusto 
with which he exclaimed, " It is gushing ! and I 
like it ! " What he relished with such zest he in 



4 o8 MY OWN STORY 

turn generously bestowed, and I have letters of 
his regarding some things of mine that had in- 
terested and pleased him — beautifully written 
letters, their neat and graceful chirography now 
faded by time — which I " keep among the trea- 
sures of my correspondence," to quote words that 
have so much deeper a significance in my case 
than they could have had in his own. 

Ill 

The doctor's small, upright, animated figure 
seemed possessed of inexhaustible vitality, but in 
his advancing years his public appearances be- 
came a severe drain upon it, and he felt the need 
of husbanding it for special efforts, as he confided 
to me on more than one occasion. We were both 
engaged to deliver poems at the great Moore Fes- 
tival, given in Boston in May, 1879, m celebration 
of the Irish poet's centennial birthday ; and I re- 
tain a very vivid recollection of the Autocrat's dis- 
may when we learned that the guests had been 
brought together an hour before the banquet was 
to take place ! After talking for twenty minutes 
or so to those who crowded around him, eager to 
catch a word from his lips, he whispered to me 
despairingly, " Help me out of this ; don't let any- 
body follow ! " 

I said in alarm, " You are not going away ! " 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 409 

"For half an hour," he replied. "I am going 
to get into a horse-car and ride up and down until 
the real, honest hour for the dinner arrives. I 
must save my voice for my poem." 

He returned in time to go in fresh and smiling 
to the dinner on the arm of that gifted young 
Irish revolutionist and adventurer, journalist and 
poet, John Boyle O'Reilly, while I followed with 
General Patrick A. Collins (now Mayor of Bos- 
ton) for an escort. These two noted Irish- Ameri- 
cans were among the foremost promoters of the 
festival, but not, I think, responsible for the too 
early assembling of the guests ; and I doubt that 
either of them knew what had become of the doc- 
tor in that half hour interval. He was in fine 
voice for his poem. 1 

IV 

A few months later, in December of that same 
year, 1879, I nac * the honor of uniting in the cele- 
bration of Dr. Holmes's seventieth birthday, con- 
tributing a poem, Filling an Order, to the post- 
prandial exercises, at the famous Breakfast given 
to him by his publishers. It was one of the most 
notable gatherings of literary celebrities from far 
and near which Boston had ever witnessed. The 

1 My own poem, read at the Moore Banquet, was Recollec- 
tions of Lalla Rookh. 



4 io MY OWN STORY 

Autocrat's own beautiful and touching poem, The 
Iron Gate, read in a voice at times tenderly play- 
ful, at others vibrant with deeper emotion, was 
of course the memorable event of the Breakfast, 
and worthy of the audience and the hour. His 
praises were sounded by others in every key, in 
prose and verse ; but I shall speak here only of 
my own contribution. 

The Order, fabled to have been received by 
Dame Nature in her laboratory, was for " three 
geniuses," one a bard, one wise, and one supremely 
witty, to grace an obscure town by the sea named 
Boston. The finer ingredients were mixed, and 
the souls set to steep, each in its glowing ves- 
sel : — 

In each by turns she poured, she stirred, she skimmed the shining 

liquor, 
Threw laughter in, to make it thin, or thought, to make it 

thicker ; 
But when she came to choose the clay, she found, to her vex- 
ation, 
That, with a stock on hand to fill an order for a nation, 
Of that more finely tempered stuff, electric and ethereal, 
Of which a genius must be formed, she had but scant material — 
For three ? for one ! What should be done ? A bright idea 

struck her ; 
Her old witch eyes began to shine, her mouth began to pucker. 
Says she, " The fault, I 'm well aware, with genius is, the pre- 
sence 
Of altogether too much clay, with quite too little essence, 
And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution ; 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 41 r 

So now, instead of spoiling these by over-much dilution, 
With their fine elements I '11 make a single, rare phenomenon, 
And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one, 
So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal, 
Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel." 
So said, so done ; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the 

label : 
Poet, Professor, Autocrat of Wifs own Breakfast-Table. 

I had the satisfaction of feeling that I had the 
audience with me in the reading ; and that the 
fable pleased the subject of it I was gratifyingly 
assured in a letter I received from him a few days 
later, from which I cannot forbear quoting a single 
sentence : — 

" I thought your poem excellent when I listened 

to it, but my hearing is not so sharp as it once 

was, and I did not know how excellent, how neat, 

ingenious, terse, artistic it was until I came to 

read it." 

V 

One of the later occasions in which my voice 
was publicly heard with the Autocrat's was the 
Garden Party, given by Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company, at Governor Claflin's country house in 
Newton, to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in cele- 
bration of her seventieth birthday. This was in 
the leafy month of June, 1882. At that open 
air festival we heard Mrs. Stowe herself, her 
brother, Henry Ward Beecher, and other celeb- 



4 i2 MY OWN STORY 

rities ; but the chief event was Dr. Holmes's 
poem. 

The doctor's voice was not remarkable, — it 
was slightly husky, and lacking in clear reso- 
nance, but in his use of it he made you forget 
that it was not the fittest organ for his purpose; 
just as you were rendered oblivious of his inferior 
stature (five feet four or five) by his animation 
and perfect aplomb. Surely no other so narrow 
human jaw was ever the gateway of such intelli- 
gent and forceful speech ("the smallest adult jaw 
I ever fitted teeth to," his dentist once said to 
me) ; but it had a nervous tension that compen- 
sated for its insignificant size. Lowell, Longfel- 
low, Whittier, Hawthorne, Agassiz, like the most 
of his great contemporaries, might have justified 
the findings of the phrenologist or physiognomist ; 
but he, even more than Emerson, demonstrated 
the truth that, of brains, quality is better than 
quantity, that spirit is more than flesh. He was 
a living disproof of Whitman's proud attestation 
that " size is only development." 

The Autocrat's voice and manner were never 
more effective than on that refulgent afternoon at 
the Claflin Garden Party. Who that was present 
can ever have forgotten the two opening stanzas 
of his poem, The World's Homage, in which he 
fancied people of every land who had read Uncle 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 413 

Tom summoned to the table, and the Babel of 
tongues that would have been heard there ? 

" Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, 
Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, 

Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, 
High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, 
The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, 
Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo, 

Would shout, * We know the lady ! ' " 

Only to those who heard him can the cold 
types convey an idea of the emphasis and percus- 
sive force of enunciation which he flung into this 
felicitously rhymed, surprisingly collocated list of 
names. It was greeted by such an outburst of 
irrepressible applause as was not heard before or 
after on that day, not even at the close of his 
reading. As I joined in the hand-clapping and 
watched the face of Mrs. Stowe wreathed in 
smiles, I fortunately forgot my own dozen or more 
four-line stanzas, snugly folded away in my breast 
pocket, to be unfolded and to come forth later. 

As the persistent and prolonged uproar sub- 
sided, it was with a startled feeling that I remem- 
bered the ordeal of comparison before me, and 
with something like a cowardly wish that the 
verses I had thought tolerably well of up to that 
moment might be quietly dropped from the cata- 
logue of things to be called for. I must acknow- 



4 i4 MY OWN STORY 

ledge that the feeling marred a little my enjoy- 
ment of the remainder of Holmes's recital, and 
was perhaps the cause of my fancying in the sub- 
sequent stanzas a falling off from the superla- 
tively bright and vigorous opening. Or was it 
possible (as these are very frank memoirs, I ven- 
ture the suggestion), — was it barely possible that 
I indulged a secret hope that the prestige of those 
dazzling first flashes might be mercifully tempered, 
for my sake ? 

If for a moment I cherished that feeble hope, I 
had ample time to return to a more resolute and 
generous frame of mind before delivering my tri- 
bute. The doctor was followed by other readers 
and speakers, who caused my interest in my own 
forthcoming effort to rise by degrees, to revive, 
and put forth buds of faith and buoyant expec- 
tation, until I finally stepped upon the improvised 
platform with a tranquil confidence not unjusti- 
fied, I think, by the reception accorded to my 
reading of The Cabin. As was inevitable, some 
of the thoughts in the doctor's poem were paral- 
leled in my own. 

The Slave went forth through all the earth, 

He preached to priest and rabbin ; 
He spoke all tongues ; in every land 

Opened that lowly Cabin. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 415 

VI 

One or two briefly told anecdotes must close 
these desultory reminiscences of one of Boston's 
most remarkable men. Going once to hear a lec- 
ture by Matthew Arnold, I entered the hall early, 
and, seeing Holmes alone in one of the central 
seats, took a place beside him for a chat while 
the audience was coming in. Soon we saw Rev. 
James Freeman Clarke wandering down one of 
the side aisles, with his numbered ticket in his 
hand, scanning the backs of seats. 

" There," said the doctor, " is my Double. We 
were friends in boyhood, we were classmates in 
college, our orbits are forever crossing ; wherever 
I go he appears. I can no more avoid him than I 
can my own shadow." While he was relating 
some curious instance of this seeming fatality, 
Clarke drew near, still observing the backs of 
rows ; when I inquired, — 

" What is your number, Mr. Clarke ? " He 
named it. "Here it is," I said, "beside Dr. 
Holmes ; I am in your seat." 

One afternoon, in the years of which I am writ- 
ing, I chanced to call upon Mr. Longfellow just 
after he had received a visit from the doctor. 

" What a delightful man he is ! " said he. " But 
he has left me, as he generally does, with a head- 



4 i6 MY OWN STORY 

ache." When I inquired the cause, he replied : 
"The movement of his mind is so much more 
rapid than mine, that I often find it difficult to 
follow him, and if I keep up the strain for any 
length of time, a headache is the penalty." 

Every one who knew the Autocrat must have 
been impressed by this trait ascribed to him by 
Longfellow, — the extraordinary rapidity of his 
mental processes. Not that he talked fast, but 
that his turns of thought were surprisingly bright 
and quick, and often made with a kind of scientific 
precision, agreeably in contrast with the looseness 
of statement commonly characterizing those who 
speak volubly and think fast. In one of the early 
Autocrat papers he made this comparison : " Writ- 
ing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you 
may hit your reader's mind, or miss it. But talk- 
ing is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an 
engine ; if it is within reach, and you have time 
enough, you can't help hitting it." His own talk 
was less like hose-playing than most men's. It 
was more like shooting with a rifle, — and it was 
always sure to hit. In view of this habitual viva- 
city, how we must marvel at his length of life, 
measured not by years only, but by the amount 
of thought and feeling and spiritual energy that 
animated him throughout his long and fortunate 
career ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 417 

Holmes's place among the writers of his time 
is distinctly assured. He enriched our literature 
with a new form of essay as distinctly individual 
as Montaigne's or Charles Lamb's. In metrical 
composition his work is voluminous and varied, 
much of it ephemeral, but all of it lucid and musi- 
cal ; and he has left a few lyrics that take high 
rank — one of them almost the highest — as pure 
poetry. A characteristic note is a certain playful 
tenderness ; and I think his Muse charms us most 
when she appears, like the bride in the ballad, — 

" With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye," — 

when the verses are dewy and tremulous with a 
feeling which the wit irradiates and sets off, yet 
seems half designed to conceal. 

" Of sweet singers the most sane, 
Of keen wits the most humane." 



CHAPTER XIV 

LONGFELLOW 



Although Longfellow was not one of my liter- 
ary passions, — perhaps because I came under his 
influence so gradually, — the spirit that breathed 
in his poems inspired in me a feeling of love and 
admiration long before I saw him, — a feeling that 
grew in depth and constancy after I was admitted 
to his acquaintance, and the acquaintance ripened 
into friendship. 

That honor was rather late in coming to me, 
entirely through my own perverse neglect of op- 
portunities, which I have elsewhere confessed and 
deplored. When the hour of meeting came, it 
was he who took the initial step toward it. Grasp- 
ing my hand warmly, he began at once to talk to 
me of my poems with a delightful sincerity that 
blew away like dandelion woof or thistle-down the 
last film and feather of my aloofness, and made 
me humbly ashamed of it, when he inquired 
earnestly, — 

" Why have you never come to see me ? " 



LONGFELLOW 419 

"Because," I said, "I never felt that the work 
I have been trying to do gave me any right to 
intrude myself on your attention." And, with 
the frankness that is often the twin sister of 
reserve, I went on to speak of his being already 
a famous poet, a Cambridge professor, a man re- 
presenting the highest culture, when I first came 
to Boston with the odor of my native backwoods 
still upon me, — without friends, or academic ac- 
quirements, or advantages of any sort ; — and of 
the feeling I could never quite get over, of the 
immense distance between us. 

" That," he replied, " is the effect of mirage ; it 

is illusion. At any rate, there is no such distance 

now." And there never was, from that time 

forth. 

II • 

Longfellow was slightly below the medium 
stature, but of a sufficiently stocky build, well 
planted on his feet, as the French say ; with 
strong, symmetrical features, which must have 
been singularly handsome in his youth as they 
were singularly noble in his later years ; the fore- 
head sweeping to a shapely width in constructive- 
ness and ideality; mild blue eyes under fine 
brows, and hair and beard of patriarchal white- 
ness. Charles Kingsley said of him in 1868 : "I 
do not think I ever saw a finer human face ; " 



4 2o MY OWN STORY 

which might have been truly said of him to the 
last. 

He had the simplicity of manners which belongs 
to strong, true natures, and a tact and sympathy 
that prompted him to meet all persons on their 
own ground of interest and experience. Of all 
people I ever knew he was the most charitable in 
speech, tolerant even of faults which society 
deems it dangerous to condone. I never heard 
him speak with anything like indignant condem- 
nation of anybody except a certain class of critics 
who sit in judgment upon works they have neither 
the heart to feel nor the sense to understand. 
Some kind friend once sent me a review in which 
a poor little volume of my own verse was scalped 
and tomahawked with savage glee. Turning the 
page, I was consoled to see a volume of Longfel- 
low's treated in the same Ojibway style; for, I 
reflected, " The critic who strikes at him blunts 
the weapon with which he would wound others." 
Meeting him in a day or two, I found that some 
equally well-meaning friend had sent him a copy 
of the same review. I was surprised to see how 
much he was annoyed by it, and said to him, — 

" I may well be disturbed when they try to blow 
out my small lantern, but why should you care 
when they puff away at your star ? " 

He replied, "The ill-will of anybody hurts me. 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



LONGFELLOW 421 

Besides, there are people who will believe what 
this man says. If he cannot speak well of a book, 
why speak of it at all ? " 

"He must earn his bread," I suggested. 

"So," he replied, "must the hired assassin and 
the highwayman." 

Ill 

He had suffered from abundant unjust and fool- 
ish criticism in earlier days ; but I do not believe 
his wise, calm spirit was ever more than tempo- 
rarily ruffled by it. Older readers will remember 
the very general depreciation, the ridicule in para- 
phrase and parody, with which Hiawatha was at 
first received. But Hiawatha quickly came to 
rival Evangeline in public favor ; and the relent- 
ing reviewers joined afterwards in the chorus of 
its praise. Evangeline had likewise been the sub- 
ject of much adverse comment, especially in re- 
spect to the hexameters, which were declared 
unsuited for English verse. Poe's ridicule of them 
remains a brilliant example of a style of criticism 
common in the middle of the last century, but 
which is hardly possible among self-respecting 
men of letters to-day. Having resorted to the 
old trick of printing as prose a passage selected 
for his purpose, to illustrate the absence of the 
spondee, indispensable in the Greek hexameter, 



422 MY OWN STORY 

he went on to say that he could manage the point 
Longfellow and others had missed ; giving as a 
sample these lines, in which the spondee is very 
much in evidence : — 

" Du tell ! when shall we hope to make men of sense out of 

the Pundits 
Born and brought up with their snouts deep down in the mud 

of the Frog Pond ? 
Why ask ? who ever yet saw money made out of a fat old 
Jew, or downright, upright nutmegs out of a pine knot ? " 

This was very funny ; and " du tell," " deep 
down," "Frog Pond," and the like are good spon- 
dees. But Poe himself felt obliged to apologize 
for the dactyls ; " hope to make," " men of sense," 
"born and brought," which take the place of dac- 
tyls, being, properly speaking, not dactyls at all. 
Such criticism goes to show that the Greek and 
Latin hexameter is not possible in English verse, 
nor in any verse that is scanned by accents, and 
not by long and short syllables. This Longellow 
knew as well as anybody, and what he attempted 
was some such adaptation of it as Goethe had 
brought into favor with German readers in his 
Hermann und Dorothea. Poe's travesty had long 
been forgotten, or it was kept in the minds of 
men only by Poe's growing fame as a poet, and 
Longfellow could well afford to smile at it benig- 
nantly, as he did at that and Poe's other attacks 



LONGFELLOW 423 

upon him, when I once ventured to recall them to 
his mind ; for his choice of metre, and his easy 
management of it, had been amply justified by 
time and the judgment of mankind ; the flowing 
hexameters which relate Evangeline's beautiful 
story continuing to be read, then as now, by 
learned and unlearned alike, with perennial de- 
light. 

IV 

Longfellow had little of Holmes's facility in 
writing occasional verses, and still less of Holmes's 
boyish delight in reciting them. Yet Holmes 
himself never wrote anything more graceful than 
the tribute to Agassiz on his fiftieth birthday, 
or more delightfully rollicking than the other 
Agassiz poem, Noel, written in French, — a trifle, 
indeed, but yet a tour de force, appreciated by 
those at least to whom French is an acquired 
tongue, and who have adventured their poetic 
feet among the hedges and pitfalls of the hiatus 
and other artificial restrictions of French verse. 
It may be in place here to repeat what Longfel- 
low's brother-in-law, Thomas G. Appleton, once 
said to me of the poet's mastery of modern lan- 
guages and literatures. " It is an accomplishment 
which his fame as a poet has too much overshad- 
owed, but which should give him a foremost repu- 
tation among American scholars." 



4 2 4 MY OWN STORY 

Holmes could hang his halo of verse on any 
star of occasion, but Longfellow needed an im- 
pulse from within. When urged by his Bowdoin 
classmates to write something for their semi- 
centennial anniversary, no happy thought sug- 
gested itself, and he hastened to unburden his 
mind of the care and responsibility of such a 
task by positively declining it. Then came the 
inspiring motive of Morituri Salutamus, one of 
his noblest poems, drawn from the deeps of his 
poetic nature, and written in a glow of enjoyment 
chilled only by the prospective ordeal of public 
delivery. The final announcement that he was 
to appear in person and read his poem thrilled 
with joyous expectation every son of Bowdoin, 
and rallied to the college, on the eventful day, 
such throngs of its alumni and friends as it never 
saw gathered before. I think that, when the hour 
came, he rather enjoyed what he had dreaded ; 
and his kindly nature must have been gratified by 
an opportunity of giving pleasure to so many. I 
asked a Bowdoin man how Longfellow bore him- 
self. " Finely ! " he said. " I could n't hear him, 
but it was glory enough to have him there, and to 
have his poem in print afterwards." 



LONGFELLOW 425 



His voice was ill fitted for public speaking ; it 
was habitually gentle and low, and it was irksome 
for him to raise it above the conversational pitch. 
I never heard it on any public occasion except 
once. At the great Boston Banquet given by 
Houghton, Mifflin and Company in honor of 
Whittier's seventieth birthday, it was with the 
utmost difficulty that Whittier himself could be 
prevailed upon to be present. Growing old was 
bad enough, he said, "without being twitted of 
it," — as Pickard relates in his full and graphic 
Life of the poet. A sense of the incongruity 
of such a performance with the principal charac- 
ter left out finally prevailed over his diffidence ; 
almost at the last hour he consented to appear, 
and in acknowledgment of the tremendous ova- 
tion that greeted him, he spoke a few well-chosen 
but rather hesitating words, which could not be 
called a speech. Even then he would not trust 
himself to read the poem he had prepared, and 
which he had in advance engaged Longfellow to 
read for him. Longfellow introduced the poem 
with some easy conversational remarks ; in them, 
and in the reading of Whittier's Response, his 
manner was self-possessed and unaffected ; but 
his voice lacked carrying quality ; and although I 



426 MY OWN STORY 

was in a position to catch the lowest words dis- 
tinctly, I judged, by the hollowing of hands 
behind ears, that neither he nor Whittier was 
heard well at the remoter tables. 

Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes were the 
chief guests of honor, besides Whittier himself. 
Holmes, of course, had a poem to read, and he 
read it with his usual enunciative vigor. Emer- 
son, who was already beginning to show signs of 
the decay of his powers which progressed slowly 
but fatally in the following years, made a few 
remarks laudatory of Whittier, and particularly 
of Whittier' s Ichabod, which he then proceeded 
to read, not very effectively, as it proved. 1 

1 I had also prepared, by invitation, a poem to read at the 
Whittier Banquet ; but as the subject of it withdrew in the midst 
of the proceedings in his honor, and before my place in the pro- 
gramme had been reached, I quietly followed his example, left 
the speakers still speaking (at eleven o'clock), and reserved my 
Story of the Barefoot Boy for later publication. It was founded 
on an incident of the poet's boyhood, which I had from his 
younger brother Matthew, and which I told very much as it was 
told to me, except that I put it into rhyme, and transferred the 
scene to the open air from the bedroom and bed where it actually 
occurred. Pickard, in his Life of Whittier, describes the cham- 
ber in which the two boys slept, and, alluding to the poem, 
adds : " The two little Quaker boys had found they could lift 
each other, and one evening experimented upon the proposition 
made by the elder, that by lifting each other in turn they could 
rise to the ceiling, and there was no knowing how much fur- 
ther if they were out of doors ! The prudent lads first tried the 



LONGFELLOW 427 

VI 

The reading of Ichabod was regarded by Long- 
fellow as one of two unfortunate mistakes which 
were committed, by famous guests, on that memo- 
rable evening. In talking over the Banquet with 
me a day or two after, he asked if I was not amazed 
at Emerson's want of tact in selecting such a poem 
for such an occasion. 

"Why, no," I answered in some surprise; "it 
did n't strike me so. I have always thought 
Ichabod one of Whittier's strongest poems, — 
perhaps his very strongest political poem." 

" But what a terrible denunciation of Web- 
ster ! " he exclaimed. " It was perhaps well 
enough for the time when it was written ; but 
the passions of men have cooled, and I am sure 
Whittier himself regrets having made so terrible 
an attack upon our greatest statesman, — once 
the idol of Massachusetts, and still believed in by 

experiment, standing upon the bed in their little room. Trow- 
bridge says : — 

" ' 'T was a shrewd notion, none the less, 
And still, in spite of ill success, 

It somehow has succeeded. 
Kind Nature smiled on that wise child, 

Nor could her love deny him 
The large fulfillment of his plan, 
Since he who lifts his brother man 

In turn is lifted by him.' " 



428 MY OWN STORY 

a large number of those present at the dinner. 
Why bring up again, at such a time, a subject 
that must be offensive to many ? " 

I had not regarded it in that light ; it was 
characteristic of Longfellow's large charity that 
he had. When I said I hardly thought the par- 
tisanship of the poem was noticed by the audi- 
ence, he immediately began to make excuses for 
Emerson, saying, " Of course, he took only the 
literary view of it, as you did." 

I thought this curiously illustrative of the dif- 
ference in temperament between Longfellow and 
his two distinguished friends. He lacked the fine 
ethical energy of Emerson and the forceful im- 
pulse of the Quaker poet, while his abhorrence of 
oppression was no doubt as great as theirs. He 
was not formed for conflict ; he shrank from 
severity of censure and deprecated injustice even 
to the unjust. He who had written and published 
Poems on Slavery as early as 1842, when to utter 
a word against the divinely appointed institution 
was to invite opprobrium, — he who was Charles 
Sumner's closest friend, admiring in him the war- 
fare he was himself unfitted to wage, — must be 
ranked as a fearless and consistent opponent of 
slavery, notwithstanding the charge of time-serv- 
ing once brought against him for consenting to 
the omission of the slavery pieces from an edition 



LONGFELLOW 429 

of his poems otherwise complete. This was no 
sacrifice of principle, although he perhaps yielded 
too much to the representations of the publisher, 
who was packing his goods, so to speak, for a 
market the gates of which were too narrow for 
that load. These were not his best poems, nor 
even his second best ; they continued to be issued 
in other editions, and their suppression in that 
particular one showed no such " subserviency to 
the slave power" as some abolitionists, notably 
Parker in one of his sermons, indignantly averred. 
His reprobation of Webster's course was as deep 
as that of the more fiery Whittier, whom it in- 
spired to write Ichabod, or of the philosophic 
Emerson, when it drew him from his studious 
solitudes, and moved him to declare, in a public 
discourse on the Fugitive Slave Law, " Every 
drop of blood in this man's veins has eyes that 
look downward." While deploring the great 
statesman's advocacy of that law, Longfellow's 
broad charity and calm equipoise of opinion led 
him to judge the man himself more as posterity 
is judging him. 

That Holmes had a son who enlisted in our 
Civil War and was dangerously wounded is a 
circumstance that has been kept in the memory 
of men by the Autocrat's narrative of his Hunt 
for the Captain, and by the Captain's subsequent 



430 MY OWN STORY 

career as an eminent jurist. It is not so well 
remembered that Longfellow likewise gave a son 
to his country's service in the great conflict 
against slavery, a son who was also dangerously 
wounded at the front, and whom the father simi- 
larly hastened to seek and bring home. 

VII 

Once we were speaking of the prices paid to 
the best writers by the best periodicals, when 
Longfellow remarked that he could never get over 
the feeling that one hundred dollars was a very 
large sum for a poem of perhaps not half a hun- 
dred lines. I said it did not seem so to me, even 
if we considered merely the labor that went into 
it, let alone the name and fame of the author. 

"You would think differently," he said, "if 
you had written as many poems for three and five 
dollars each as I have," — those being the prices 
he had received for some of his earlier well-known 
pieces, which he named. The immortal Psalm of 
Life — which, with the marks it bears of an im- 
perfect mastery of the art he was afterwards to 
bring to such perfection, yet breathes the inmost 
spirit of his genius, — the poem that may almost 
be said to have established his reputation — was 
sold for three or five dollars (certainly not more 
than five, — I think he told me three) to the 



LONGFELLOW 43 x 

Knickerbocker Magazine, in which it first ap- 
peared. This was in 1838. Through the agency 
of his versatile friend, Samuel Ward, in New 
York, he was enabled in a few years to command 
three or four times five dollars for anything he 
chose to write, — fifteen or twenty dollars being 
really a dazzling price for a poem in those days. 

The Hanging of the Crane was disposed of to 
the New York Ledger for an exceptionally large 
sum ; the history of which transaction was related 
to me by Longfellow about the time it took place. 
The poem was finished in December, 1873, and 
sent to Ward in New York, who received it with 
rapture, and wrote that he thought his " trotting 
friend Bonner " would pay " two guineas a line for 
it." As it comprised about two hundred lines, 
this meant a little more than two thousand dol- 
lars. Mr. Fields advised that it should not ap- 
pear in any periodical, but be issued at once in a 
small and elegant illustrated volume. Longfellow 
held the matter in consideration for a month or 
more, then consented that the poem should be 
submitted to Bonner, who promptly proposed to 
pay one thousand dollars for it, — about five 
dollars a line. Longfellow thought this offer 
munificent enough, and would have accepted it 
unquestioningly ; but Ward demurred, contend- 
ing that such a poem from so famous an author 



432 MY OWN STORY 

should have a higher value for the Ledger, — a 
sheet that had founded its enormous success 
mainly on the stories of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. Bon- 
ner thereupon consulted his lawyer, a man of 
liberal views, who said : " Ward is right. Send 
Longfellow a check for three thousand dollars, 
and give Ward an honorarium of one thousand 
for his mediation." Bonner was himself a man 
of the most liberal disposition, which was evinced 
not only in practical matters, but in those of a 
more personal nature ; as when, the Ledger having 
gradually outgrown the Cobb, Jr., style of story, 
instead of casting out with business-like indiffer- 
ence the writer who had been so useful to him, 
Bonner retired him on a pension of four thousand 
dollars a year, which Mr. Cobb enjoyed in his 
home in Norway, Maine, after he had ceased to 
write, and as long as he lived. 

Bonner saw the force of his lawyer's sugges- 
tion; and so it happened that The Hanging of 
the Crane appeared in the Ledger at an expense 
to that paper of four thousand dollars, three 
fourths of which went to Longfellow, and one 
fourth to Ward. Considering that it was after- 
wards issued by the poet's publishers in a sump- 
tuous holiday edition that had an immense sale, 
it is safe to say that this poem of two hundred 
lines was, for its length, the "best paid " piece of 
purely literary work ever produced. 



LONGFELLOW 433 



VIII 



In speaking of this poem I am reminded of a 
poetical figure in it that may have been suggested 
by one in my own poem, Service, which had ap- 
peared in The Atlantic Monthly some time before. 
I had written : — 

" For me the diamond dawns are set 
In rings of beauty." 

In Longfellow's lines the image is reversed, the 
dazzling dawn becomes the smiling close of day, 
and the sun 

" Like a ruby from the horizon's ring 
Drops down into the night." 

Longfellow was of course unconscious of this 
adaptation, — if indeed it was an adaptation, and 
not a figure that had arisen independently in his 
own mind ; although Service was a poem of which 
he had spoken to me of having read. 

His imagination, like that of every true poet, 
was the haunt of suggestions that had come to 
him often from unknown sources and by unre- 
membered ways, — teeming fancies ready to start 
forth in the light and take place and shape in 
the page they were needed to adorn. Sometimes 
the thought that first appeared in one form reap- 
peared in another ; as when the poet wrote in his 
journal (November 18, 1850), "This college work 



434 MY OWN STORY 

is like a great hand laid on all the strings of my 
lyre, stopping their vibrations," and afterwards, in 
The Golden Legend, — 

" Time has laid his hand 
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, 
But as a harper lays his open palm 
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations." 

I do not know that anybody had used this image 
before ; but in Excelsior he had written, — 

" A voice falls like a falling star," — 

to discover later (as he notes in his diary) that 
Brainerd had already said the same thing of the 
mocking-bird's note, — 

" It falls 
As a lost star falls down into the marsh." 

Wordsworth has in one of his odes, — 

" All treasures hoarded by the miser Time," — 

which Longfellow, as he notes again in his diary, 
had never read when in his Ode to a Child he 
wrote, — 

" The buried treasures of the miser Time." 

He was generally fortunate enough to detect 
these echoes or resemblances in advance of the 
critics, but not always : as when the one striking 
image, in the one memorable poem of the Bishop 
of Chichester, — rendered memorable only by this 



LONGFELLOW 435 

circumstance, — - reappeared as the " muffled 
drums " of the Psalm of Life, and brought down 
upon him the injurious charge of plagiarism. As 
he himself observes in his journal, " One cannot 
strike a spade in the soil of Parnassus without 
disturbing the bones of some dead poet." 

Here again I am reminded of a thought which 
I once adapted from him, and which must have 
persisted in my mind long after I had forgotten 
that it had any other source than my own imagi- 
nation. Early in 1858 I wrote the following win- 
ter piece, which I print here to illustrate a curious 
literary circumstance relating to two names of 
much greater interest than my own : — 

When evening closes, and without 

I hear the snow-storm drive and sift, 

And Boreas plunge with many a shout 

Into the tree and through the drift, 

Methinks that up and down, 

With his merry, mocking clown, 

Goes the old king who gave away his crown. 

The king so old and gray ! 

Alas, alas the day 
That saw him part his golden crown 
To deck fair Summer's forehead gay 

And Autumn's tresses brown ! 

The cruel sisters twain 

Have robbed him of his train ; 
And now all night he laughs and raves, 
And beats his breast and sings wild staves, 



436 MY OWN STORY 

And scatters his white hair over the graves. 
A mad and broken-hearted Lear, 

He roams the earth with crazed brain ; 
Ah, would the gentle Spring were here, 
The sweet Cordelia of the year, 
To soothe his bitter pain ! 

Fondly believing this to be original, and think- 
ing tolerably well of it, I handed it to Underwood 
for The Atlantic. He likewise thought well of it, 
and took it to Cambridge, for Lowell's accept- 
ance. It came back to me with the comment that 
it had a fault. This was not the overworked 
and worn-out classic Boreas, which certainly had 
no business in so modern a composition, and which 
could easily have been changed to North Wind. 
Nor yet was it the bookish " methinks," in the use 
of which I might have pleaded the example of 
Hawthorne, who even puts it into the colloquial 
speech of some of his characters, — if ever the 
speech of Hawthorne's characters may be termed 
"colloquial." As for the feeble inversions, "fore- 
head gay," and "tresses brown," — where the 
adjective is placed after the noun for the too ob- 
vious convenience of the rhythm and rhyme, — 
they were indeed blemishes, which I was to have 
sense and conscience enough to banish altogether 
and forever from my later verse, along with all 
such earmarks of the conventional poetic diction ; 
although I might have justified them by adducing 



LONGFELLOW 437 

the usage of poets the most renowned. But the 
fault that condemned my winter piece was none 
of these. It was the worst of all faults. The 
leading idea of the poem was stolen — " Long- 
fellowniously obtained," as Underwood laughingly 
said, quoting, I think, his editor-in-chief. I im- 
mediately looked up the Midnight Mass for the 
Dying Year, and was dismayed to find there the 
image I had so shamelessly plagiarized : — 

" The foolish, fond old Year 
Crowned with wild flowers and with heather 
Like weak despised Lear ; " 

the comparison being carried further in the suc- 
ceeding stanzas. 

Of course I did not print the poem in The 
Atlantic, or anywhere else, but flung it aside in 
wrath and humiliation, and hardly ever gave it a 
thought afterwards, until I was reminded of it by 
the aforementioned curious circumstance, to the 
point of which I am now coming. It is this : in 
Lowell's volume, Under the Willows and Other 
Poems, which appeared ten years later (1868), 
the title poem has on page 10 these lines : — 

" And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, 
Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms." 

Now this was also undoubtedly an unconscious 
appropriation of the same image that I had " Long- 



438 MY OWN STORY 

fellowniously obtained ; " and the incomprehen- 
sible thing about it is that Lowell should have 
picked up, and pocketed, and afterwards have 
stuck into his poetical shirt front, the little gem, 
the ownership of which he had detected in my 
more expansive setting. The only explanation 
seems to be that he had forgotten both Long- 
fellow's original and my imitation, and reproduced 
the idea as innocently as poets are all liable to 
reproduce ideas, — as he himself reproduced a line 
of Shelley in an earlier part of the same poem 
(Under the Willows), where he describes the 
West (west wind) — 

" Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud ; " — 

which are certainly the English poet's "white 
fleecy clouds " over again, — 

" Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind." 
IX 

Longfellow was accustomed to receive all sorts 
of people, some of whom sought him out for the 
most whimsical reasons ; like the English visitors 
who said to him with astounding frankness, " As 
there are no ruins in this country we thought 
we would come and see you." The old colonial 
Craigie mansion, with its windows commanding 
the broad valley where — 



LONGFELLOW 439 

" The flooded Charles . . . 
Writes the last letter of his name," 

was unquestionably, both from its earlier and later 
associations, the most attractive house in Cam- 
bridge. But I was always so much more inter- 
ested in the man I went to see there than in 
anything else in or about it, or even in the memo- 
ries of the great Washington, whose historical 
headquarters it had been, that I never really saw 
it, save in the most partial and casual manner, 
until one afternoon, when some ladies sent in their 
cards just as I was taking leave. They came with 
the modest request that they might be shown the 
house and "just speak with Mr. Longfellow if he 
was n't too busy to see them." He promptly 
gave orders that they should be admitted, and 
turning to me, said, " Stay, and help me entertain 
these callers ; " which I was very glad to do, as 
it gave me an opportunity of seeing, with him 
for cicerone, not only such parts of the house 
and the things in it as I had seen before, though 
never so advantageously, but other parts, with 
their numerous objects of interest. Our host, 
in his genial way, tried to palm me off also as 
an "object of interest," but without distinguished 
success. 

Beginning with the room in which the visitors 
found us, — the front room at the right of the 



440 MY OWN STORY 

entrance, once General Washington's official head- 
quarters, but in later years the poet's study, in 
which so many of his famous poems had been 
written, — he had some simple but illuminating 
word of association or suggestion for every object 
to which he called attention : among many other 
precious things, perhaps the most precious, uni- 
form bindings of the original manuscripts of his 
works, nearly complete, and shelved behind glass, 
— all in his own unvarying, beautifully round, up- 
right hand, the most of them in pencil ; Cole- 
ridge's inkstand, always in sight on his centre- 
table ; sand of the desert in an hourglass (subject 
of his well-known poem); in the drawing-room an 
exquisitely carved agate cup, the work of Benve- 
nuto Cellini, which had once belonged to the poet 
Rogers ; everywhere portraits and pictures, among 
these Buchanan Read's painting of Longfellow's 
Daughters, which was then well known to the 
public through photographic copies, and which, 
by an ambiguity in the grouping, had given rise 
to the absurd story that one of Longfellow's chil- 
dren had no arms. Regarding this monstrous 
fable he said : " My friend Lowell once heard a 
loud-talking woman expatiating upon it in an omni- 
bus full of passengers, and took occasion to cor- 
rect the popular error, saying that he knew the 
family, and that he could vouch for each of the 



LONGFELLOW 441 

children having a good pair of arms. The woman 
retorted, ' I have it on the best authority ! ' and 
that settled it." 

He had a fund of quiet humor in relating tradi- 
tions connected with the old house ; one of which 
commemorated an occasion when Washington was 
said to have indulged in the laughter so rare with 
him. It was when General Putnam brought to 
headquarters an old woman taken as a spy, whom 
he carried, reluctant and struggling, on his back 
into the house, — a sight which proved too much 
for the gravity even of the Father of his Country. 
After the ladies were gone I asked Mr. Longfel- 
low if such visits were not sometimes a bore to 
him. "Yes," he said, "if the comers are preten- 
tious or shallow-minded ; then I make as quick 
work with them as courtesy will allow. But 
these were sincere persons, and I am glad to have 
afforded them a pleasure which was evidently so 
much to them, and which they will remember all 
their lives." 

" And the memory of which they will transmit 
to their children," I could not help adding. 



His conversation was simple and easy, and often 
enlivened by a genial pleasantry, to me more 
welcome than the wit that keeps the listener too 



442 MY OWN STORY 

much alert. I never heard him make a pun. And 
never, in my presence, did there fall from his lips 
an expression that had in it any flavor of slang, 
except on one occasion. At the time when the 
Nineteenth Century magazine was launched, we 
were discussing Tennyson's sonnet, which ap- 
peared, a proud figure-head, on the prow of the 
first number. I remarked that it had one particu- 
larly expressive line, — 

" Now in this roaring moon 
Of daffodil and crocus." 

Longfellow's face lighted up, as he took a stride 
across his hearth, repeated the words, and stop- 
ping before me, exclaimed, " It is a fine thing to 
have one strong line go ripping through a son- 
net ! " 

It has been said, by one who had exceptional 
opportunities for knowing him, that Longfellow 
seldom if ever mentioned his distinguished contem- 
poraries, either to criticise or commend. This does 
not accord with my recollection of the various 
conversations I had with him. Rarely indeed 
did a word of disapproval fall from those gracious 
lips ; but he was by no means reticent or luke- 
warm when there was occasion for praise. I have 
already quoted his comments on Emerson and 
Whittier, in connection with the Ichabod incident. 
He once spoke freely of Emerson's faulty ear, 



LONGFELLOW 443 

and said that in at least one instance Emerson 
rivaled Whittier in the badness of his rhymes, — 

" Who bides at home, nor looks abroad, 
Carries the eagles, and masters the sword." 

But then he went on to speak of The Snow-Storm 
as a perfect gem of blank verse, citing the de- 
scription of the housemates gathered — 

" Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm" — 

and pronouncing the last to be one of the most 
beautifully suggestive lines written by any modern 
poet. 

Bayard Taylor's feat, reported at the time, of 
writing in a single night, immediately upon the 
arrival of the book in America, a review of Victor 
Hugo's La Legende des Siecles, giving metrical 
translations of some of the poems, — all remark- 
ably well done, and occupying a page or two (I 
have forgotten just how much space, and am afraid 
to say two or three pages) in the next morning's 
Tribune, — this he pronounced an achievement of 
which probably no other man in America would 
have been capable. He expressed great admira- 
tion for Taylor's varied gifts, and remarked, 
" How narrowly he escapes being a great poet ! " 
adding that he had facility, rhetoric, feeling, a 
sense of beauty and melody, yet lacked the last 
"indefinable touch." 



44 4 MY OWN STORY 

XI 

His ways with young children were exceedingly 
gracious and winning. My own girls (then very 
young indeed) had been kept out of sight when- 
ever he called, until one day, hearing their laugh- 
ter in the hall, he asked to see them. Overawed 
by his gray hair and beard and venerable aspect, 
but attracted by his smile, they approached with 
bashful pleasure as he held out his arms to them ; 
when he broke down all barriers by saying, — 

" Where are your dolls ? I want you to show 
me your dolls ! Not the fine ones you keep for 
company, but those you love best and play with 
every day." 

Before the mother could interfere, they had 
taken him at his word, and brought the shabby 
little favorites with battered noses, and were 
eagerly telling him their names and histories, 
while he questioned them with an interest that 
wholly won their childish hearts. Notwithstand- 
ing its humorous and homely aspect, — or partly 
perhaps on account of it, — the scene suggested 
a more beautiful and human picture of the often 
treated subject, " Suffer little children to come 
unto me," than any I ever beheld. 

On another occasion I took the elder of the 
little girls to see him, along with some Western 



LONGFELLOW 445 

relatives, who thought their visit to the East 
would miss its crowning satisfaction if they should 
go back without seeing Longfellow. We found 
other company at the house, and the conversation 
had become so animated that the presence of the 
child was forgotten by everybody except our host. 
Suddenly he arose with a smile, saying, " I can't 
bear that little Grace should n't also be enter- 
tained ! " and going into the hall, he set the 
musical clock to playing its tunes for her, while 
her elders talked. 

He sometimes brought to see me his intimate 
and almost lifelong friend, Professor George W. 
Greene, the historian, of Greenwich, R. I. ; and 
at one of their visits our Windsor, then a boy of 
thirteen, took us out on the lake in his boat. 
Professor Greene, who was in feeble health, 
wished to pull an oar; Windsor, full of health 
and spirits, pulled the other, and pulled too hard 
for him. This he continued to do, notwithstand- 
ing my remonstrance, — being slow to realize 
how much it was needful that he should moderate 
his stroke, — when Mr. Longfellow said, — 

" Let him row his own way ! He enjoys it ; and 
we must n't interfere with a boy's happiness. It 
makes no difference to us whether we go forward 
or only circle round and round." An incident 
in itself slight, but illustrative of his thoughtful 
regard for the happiness of the young. 



446 MY OWN STORY 

XII 

It was while walking alone with me once on the 
shore of that lake (Arlington Lake, or Spy Pond), 
that Mr. Longfellow, after stopping to gaze for 
some moments in silence at the island and the 
distant banks, overleaned by willows and water- 
maples, said to me, — 

" Why have you never put this lake into a 
poem ? " 

I said I supposed it was because I had it in 
view every day. " When I get away from it, then 
very likely my imagination will come back to it, 
and I may write something about it." 

" Don't wait for that," he replied ; " do it 



now 



I have always regretted that I did not then and 
there enter into an agreement with him that we 
should each write a poem on the subject. What 
a precious companion piece we might then have 
had to his Cadenabbia and Songo River ! I can 
almost imagine these lines, inspired by Lake 
Como, to have been breathed by his Muse that 
very afternoon, as we stood gazing from our 
shore : — 

" Sweet vision ! do not fade away ; 
Linger until my heart shall take 
Into itself the summer day, 
And all the beauty of the lake ! " 




/ 



LONGFELLOW 447 

This was in September. I waited until the glory 
of the month of May was on the wooded shores 
and the reflecting water, then, in memory of his 
inspiring suggestion, I wrote Menotomy Lake. 

I cannot forbear quoting here the last letter I 
ever received from him, it is so characteristic of 
the kindness of heart that prompted him, even in 
illness, to pen with his own hand a brief message 
that he knew would carry happiness to a friend. 
The same sheet bore the printed announcement 
which his family were then sending to his corre- 
spondents : " On account of illness, Mr. Longfellow 
finds it impossible to answer any letters at pre- 
sent ; " a circumstance that rendered all the more 
touching his voluntary note to me. And it be- 
came still more sacredly precious when it proved, 
not only the last to me, but one of the last letters 
he ever wrote. The poem referred to was Three 

Worlds. 

Cambridge, Dec. 16, 188 1. 

Dear Mr. Trowbridge, — What a beautiful 
poem is this of yours in the January Atlantic ! 

I have read it with delight, and cannot help 
writing a line to say so. 

Faithfully yours, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 



448 MY OWN STORY 

XIII 

In him passed the most purely poetical of the 
entire group of our early singers. Bryant, jour- 
nalist and politician, would now be forgotten as a 
poet but for Thanatopsis, the lines To a Water- 
fowl, and one or two other pieces. The reputa- 
tion of Poe — a man of genius, if ever there was 
one, but an adventurer, and also something of a 
charlatan — likewise rests upon three or four 
poems, one might almost say on one or two. 
Whittier, prophet and reformer, had extraordinary 
poetic sensitiveness and a winning spirituality, 
but (certainly until his later years) he was too 
much an improvisatore to regard uniform excel- 
lence in his work. Whitman brought sheaves in 
abundance, but too often with stubble plucked up 
by the roots and the soil adhering. Holmes was 
a wit and a man of science ; Lowell, satirist, es- 
sayist, diplomatist, and assuredly a poet, but one 
whose affluence of fancy and largeness of cul- 
ture did not insure him always against incongru- 
ousness of metaphor and roughness of utterance ; 
Emerson, pursuing ever the loftiest ideals, yet a 
transcendent master of crystalline prose rather 
than of rhythmical harmonies. Longfellow was 
not the greatest of the group. He was neither 
brilliant nor versatile nor intense ; great power 



[Autograph lines from " Three Worlds"'] 






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LONGFELLOW 449 

and great passion were not among his gifts ; the 
charm of his verse is more in sentiment and 
atmosphere than in any distinctively vigorous in- 
tellectual quality. But he was always the poet, 
devoted to the poet's ultimate aims, and, amid all 
the distractions of college work or other duties 
and interests, breathing the cool airs of the Par- 
nassian groves. 

Every great reputation is certain to be dimmed 
by time, and to suffer from comparison with daz- 
zling new stars, even with meteors that flash 
transitorily across the sky. Longfellow is no 
exception to the rule ; it has even become a fash- 
ion to decry his poetry as commonplace. He did 
not experiment in many metres, nor startle us 
with audacities, nor witch the world with haunt- 
ing melodies. Commonplace his poetry undoubt- 
edly is, inasmuch as it has entered into our litera- 
ture and into our lives, and has so ceased to be a 
novelty, — commonplace too, possibly, here and 
there, in a more depreciatory sense. But, when 
all admissions are made, may we not ask — pass- 
ing over without mention his more important pro- 
ductions, those on which his fame is mainly based 
— is it not pertinent to inquire what writers of 
to-day, on either side of the sea, are blending 
thought and feeling in such forms of beauty as 
The Two Angels, The Bridge, The Arsenal at 



450 MY OWN STORY 

Springfield, The Birds of Killingworth, — and a 
long list beside of poems as full of a wise, sweet 
humanity and as perfect in their art ? 

His work, more than most men's, was the out- 
growth of his character ; and the same might 
almost be said of the circumstances of his life, 
which seemed the natural branching and foliage 
of the genius they were to support and enfold. 
But for the one overwhelming catastrophe of his 
home (not forgetting the earlier intimate afflic- 
tion), I know of no other so altogether happy and 
harmonious career. He lived long in the enjoy- 
ment of the fullness of his fame, and died the 
most widely read and best beloved poet of the 
English tongue. 

No more fitting, no more touching tribute can 
be paid to him than in the words of his most illus- 
trious contemporary, who, in his own darkening 
years, when his memory was in eclipse, and those 
sky-piercing faculties showed like shattered peaks 
amid clouds, having stood long by the open coffin 
of his friend, and gazed his last upon the features 
death had stilled, murmured gently, " I do not 
remember his name, but he was a beautiful soul." 

A beautiful soul in very truth he was. 



CHAPTER XV 

CLOSING NUMBERS 



What I have thus far written of my life seems 
not much more than shaping a path through the 
woodland, broadly scoring now and then a way- 
mark and opening up a vista, but leaving on 
either side aisles of light and deeps of shade 
unsurmised, and affording few glimpses of the 
boundless blue above. When the work has gone 
irrevocably out of my hands, I shall doubtless be 
better able than I am now to determine how much 
more, or how much less, should have been told. 

I had it in mind to write more fully of some 
worthies whom I have barely mentioned, and 
to fill out a page here and there with notes 
upon others whom I have not found it conven- 
ient to mention at all; particularly to call up 
again a few of the stars that within my recollec- 
tion have shone above the charmed horizon of 
the footlights : the great contralto, Alboni, full- 
orbed, refulgent, who appeared in Boston con- 
certs two years after Jenny Lind, and remains 



452 MY OWN STORY 

to me a hardly less glorious memory than that 
peerless queen of song ; the lithe, electric Ra- 
chel and the truly royal Ristori, both of whom I 
saw in Paris now almost fifty years ago ; our own 
Charlotte Cushman, an actress of exceptional 
force and talent, the ideal Meg Merrilies (barring 
some harsh stage mannerisms), full of pathetic 
dignity as Queen Katharine, but almost too virile 
and unlovely a Lady Macbeth, and still less fitted 
for Rosalind, or any character endowed with 
delicacy and charm ; the elder Booth, who lacked 
the well-modulated art of his eminent son Ed- 
win, yet possessed more native genius, — small of 
stature, but all nerve and fire, — who could enact 
Richard III. to the wild joy of the groundlings, 
or Iago to the calm satisfaction of the judicious ; 
Forrest, whose robustiousness in rending a pas- 
sion made one too often forget his really great 
qualities (conspicuous in King Lear), and his 
admirable elocution (noticeable even in a part so 
wholly unsuited to him as Hamlet) ; last, but in 
power foremost of all the histrionic personages, 
early or late, American or foreign, whom I have 
had the good fortune to see, — the Italian whose 
superb personality united the most consummate 
art with the most prodigious energy, — Tommaso 
Salvini. Nor, since I name these, should I omit 
from the list Dickens as a personator of his own 



CLOSING NUMBERS 453 

creations, — Micawber, the Wellers, Buzfuz, and 
the rest, — whose Boston readings in 1867 I dis- 
tinctly recall ; a brisk little man most exquisitely- 
attired, with a button-hole rose, glittering studs 
and rings, a heavy fob-chain festooning his low- 
cut waistcoat ; a bald crown, and a portentous 
port-wine complexion, which a maroon-colored 
screen, always in place behind him on the plat- 
form, and a maroon-colored desk in front, were 
artfully designed to relieve ; a theatrical manner, 
a worn-out actor's voice, and many false intona- 
tions (the rising inflection being much too insist- 
ent), but with marvelously mobile features, an 
animation of style and a contagious sense of his 
own fun which would have redeemed worse faults. 

II 
Of other influences than those I have desig- 
nated, which have affected decisively my views of 
life, I ought to mention, more particularly than I 
have yet done, Darwin's great work on the Origin 
of Species. Singularly enough, I was first made 
acquainted with it by its most able and famous, 
most learned and persistent assailant. Shortly 
after the book appeared I heard Agassiz restate 
its main facts and arguments so fairly, so fully, so 
convincingly, that although he ended by declar- 
ing, " I don't believe a word of it ! " I was left 



454 MY OWN STORY 

confronted by the substantial truth of what, to my 
apprehension, all the reasons he proceeded to 
array against it failed to overthrow. Not that I 
ever accepted the unmodified Darwinian doctrine 
in all its implications. Within its province it 
threw vivid light upon many things, but it cast 
no ray into the Infinite Beyond. 

Counterbalancing that influence was one yet 
more potent, of which I must also make mention, 
if only in briefest terms. 

Fully half a century ago I became familiar 
with the phenomena of spiritualism, and had in 
my early and late investigations of them some 
quite astounding experiences, which no argu- 
ments based upon "jugglery," "hypnotism," 
" thought-transference," " subliminal conscious- 
ness," or anything of that sort, under whatever 
guise, could ever explain away. I was convinced 
that, under all the frauds and foibles that could 
be charged against mediums and their dupes, 
there were living truths, — that man has spirit-dis- 
cerning powers, and that those who have embarked 
before us on the Unknown may send back to us 
signals more or less intelligible through the mists 
that have closed in upon their voyage. I found 
in the communications so much that was confused 
and misleading that I gradually ceased to consult 
them after I had become fully satisfied as to their 



CLOSING NUMBERS 455 

source ; but the faith, thus established, has never 
faltered ; and to it I have owed, especially in 
times of bereavement, many consolations. Even 
though the identity of the voices may sometimes 
rest in doubt, much yet remains. The assurance 
remains, not new indeed, but once more vitally 
renewed, that the mind has occult faculties rarely 
developed in this state of existence, which pre- 
suppose a more ethereal condition fitted for their 
unfolding, as the submerged bud of the water-lily, 
struggling upward from the ooze, and groping 
dimly through the grosser element, is a prophecy 
of the light and air in which it is to open and 
flower. 

Ill 

Perhaps I ought to state that I have endeav- 
ored always to do the duties of a private citizen 
in the humblest capacity, on school committees, 
on juries, as public library trustee, and in further- 
ing objects of utility and charity. My tempera- 
ment and my tastes have kept me out of public 
life, but since the nomination of Fremont for the 
presidency I have been deeply interested in na- 
tional politics, as a liberal and an optimist, in the 
fullest sense of those words. I have had a very 
pleasant experience of public audiences in lectur- 
ing and in reading from my own works. 



456 MY OWN STORY 

I account it a specially good fortune that I 
have been able to meet every important business 
engagement I ever made, with a single exception. 
In all my dealings with publishers and editors I 
have never once failed to deliver, promptly as 
promised, the manuscript of a book, an editorial, 
or magazine article, or chapter of a serial story I 
may have been writing, with the printers counting 
on my weekly or monthly copy ; and I have been 
equally favored in keeping my other appointments 
with the exception mentioned, — a Western lec- 
turing tour, which in quite recent years I was 
compelled by illness to abandon when I was ac- 
tually on my way to fill the dates booked for me. 
It would be baseness on my part to make a state- 
ment of this sort in any boastfulness of spirit ; I 
give it, on the contrary, simply as a part of my 
record, and with devout thankfulness that I have 
been enabled thus to keep my mind clear from 
the clouds of unmet obligations. 

IV 
Of what the world calls " honors " I have none 
I care to speak of ; although, also as a matter 
of record, I may mention the honorary degree of 
"A. M." received from Dartmouth College, and 
the large silver medal of the Massachusetts Hu- 
mane Society, conferred for " humane exertions " 



CLOSING NUMBERS 457 

in saving a life in circumstances of difficulty and 
danger (in January, 1872) : circumstances which 
were in fact such that a stalwart spectator — who 
stood in an excited but helpless crowd on the 
shore of Mystic Lake, and saw me go out alone on 
treacherous ice, regardless of wild warning cries, 
with no support but two fragments of board I had 
hurriedly torn from a fence, and drag a drowning 
boy out of the water, in which I was myself partly 
submerged by the sinking of the ice under one 
of my boards — exclaimed vehemently, as I 
drippingly regained the bank with the boy, "I 
would n't have done that, not for ten million dol- 
lars ! " The medal, or rather the act it was de- 
signed to commemorate, I valued as attesting 
qualities the quietest life may conceal, even from 
their possessor ; nor was my satisfaction in it 
disturbed by a neighboring farmer's saying that 
the boy " was the worst melon thief in town, and 
I might as well have let him drown." It was this 
incident that suggested my story of The Silver 
Medal, written a few years later. 

V 

I still keep my Pleasant Street home in Arling- 
ton, to which it is always a gratification to re- 
turn, after absences long or short, — the longer 
the absence the greater the gratification. The 



458 MY OWN STORY 

longest absence was when I spent three years 
abroad with my young family (from 1888 to 
1 891), chiefly in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and 
France, — an experience of interest and benefit 
to us all, especially to the two older children, 
then at the susceptible period of early girlhood, 
when the art of the masters, the foreign lan- 
guages heard spoken, and the people and scenes 
observed, are instinctively absorbed. 

I was one of the first to discover the advan- 
tages of Kennebunkport (Maine) as a seaside 
resort ; and after spending parts of a number of 
summers there, in 1887 I built a house of my own 
on Cape Arundel, where I generally manage to 
pass with some members of my family a few quiet 
weeks each season by the surge-buffeted ledges 
that divide Wells Bay from the open Atlantic. 

VI 
The friend who did more than any one else 
to induce me to write these recollections — who 
has since passed to where, " beyond these voices, 
there is peace " — thought I ought to insist upon 
a point which he deemed somewhat exceptional in 
the experience of imaginative writers. Not only 
can few who will tell their stories look back so far, 
but fewer still have from the beginning of their 
careers relied for a subsistence upon their pens. 



CLOSING NUMBERS 459 

Nearly every successful writer I know has had 
in his youth or in time of need an independent 
income, or a public office, or an editorship, or 
some other regular occupation to relieve him 
from the constant necessity of harrowing his wits 
for daily bread. This is as it should be. I should 
not dare, even in these more propitious days, to 
give any young man such advice as kind old 
Major Noah gave to me. To the most actively 
creative mind intervals of rest are required ; and 
it is then a wholesome change to turn from the 
task of invention to the routine of a profession, or 
to the light labor of reviewing, or of editing the 
writings of others. Reviewing I have done very 
little of, because I never felt that I had a right to 
sit in hasty judgment upon books ; and with the 
exception of two brief periods of which I have 
made mention, I have held no editorial office. 
From my twentieth year I have relied almost 
solely upon my pen for support. It might have 
been better otherwise — who can tell ? Not that 
I would ever have divorced myself from the 
Muse ; but I would have kept her as the mistress 
of the manage, not the maid. On the other hand, 
I owe much even of my happiness to the neces- 
sity of literary labor. A natural indolence would 
often have seduced me to postpone and avoid 
that which, even when entered upon reluctantly, 
has been to me joy and health. 



460 MY OWN STORY 

Another question rises here, which has often 
risen in my mind before, as to what would have 
been the effect upon my life if I could have 
enjoyed the advantages, which I envied in others, 
of a university education, and (what would have 
been of greater value still) of early association 
with people of gifts and culture. The academic 
training would undoubtedly have saved me from 
much poor 'prentice work in story writing, and 
have afforded me a better preparation for a later 
start. But I doubt not all was as it should 
have been for my daily needs and ultimate good. 
Instead of accusing my fate, I breathe evermore a 
prayer of thankfulness for the blessings that have 
fallen to my share. I have had, not an adven- 
turous, nor a greatly varied, but on the whole a 
happy course, and am now near its close. At the 
middle milestone between threescore and ten and 
fourscore, when my " way of life " should long 
since (adjudged by the average human experi- 
ence) have " fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf," 
I am in the enjoyment of a tolerably green old age. 
I have known the sharpest afflictions, but " though 
much is taken " how much more " abides " ! I 
still carry my five feet eight inches and my 
twelve stone avoirdupois with easy uprightness, 
and am active on my feet, if no longer alert to 
mount stairs two steps at a time or to cut 3's 



CLOSING NUMBERS 461 

and 8's on the ice. I have always enjoyed mixing 
a moderate amount of manual labor with my more 
sedentary pursuits, and continue to find pleasure 
and benefit in trimming a border, pushing a lawn- 
mower, or pruning a vine. 

That something of the freshness of dawn is 
preserved for me in the evening of my days, I 
believe that I owe primarily to a sound though 
delicate constitution ; to an instinctive, never 
ascetic obedience to the laws of health ; and, 
above all, to a mind open to the "beauty and 
wonder " of the existence in which we are " em- 
bosomed." Add to this a philosophy of fortitude 
and renunciation which has enabled me to receive 
the rebuffs of fortune " with a heart for every 
fate," and which I have endeavored to carry into 
all the concerns of life ; although I have been less 
able to live up to it (I grieve to record) at times 
of petty provocation than in crises of greater mo- 
ment : a minor annoyance may perchance move 
me, while the weighty occasion settles me quietly 
to some unyielding substratum of my nature. I 
have often questioned why, with all my infirmi- 
ties of will and passion, I have not more than 
once gone to wreck on this perilous voyage of 
time. But headstrong impulse and impetuosity 
of temper are not, after all, bad fellows for the 
crew, as long as the Captain keeps the deck. 



462 MY OWN STORY 



VII 

I made my fiftieth birthday the occasion of 
an autobiographic poem, which I find sums up 
my experience of life even better at seventy-five 
than it did at twoscore and ten. This is my 
apology for citing from it these stanzas in this 
place : — 

Riches I never sought and have not found, 
And Fame has passed me with averted eye ; 

In creeks and bays my quiet voyage is bound, 
While the great world without goes surging by. 

No withering envy of another's lot, 
Nor nightmare of contention, plagues my rest ; 

For me alike what is and what is not, 
Both what I have and what I lack, are best. 

A flower more sacred than far-seen success 

Perfumes my solitary path ; I find 
Sweet compensation in my humbleness, 

And reap the harvest of a tranquil mind. 

I keep some portion of my early dream ; 

Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river, 
It lights my life, a far elusive gleam, 

Moves as I move, and leads me on forever. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abercrombie, Dr. John, his 
Intellectual Powers of Man, 
46. 

Academy, Brockport, N. Y., 
86-88. 

Agassiz, Louis, 412, 423, 453. 

Akers, Elizabeth, see Allen, Eliz- 
abeth Akers. 

Alboni, Marietta, Italian con- 
tralto, 451. 

Alcott, A. B., his Conversations, 
345> 350-356; his theory of 
temperament, 350 ; of the 
" lapse," 352-354 ; personal 
appearance, 356 ; trust in 
Providence, 356, 357 ; esti- 
mate of himself, 357-359; 
how estimated by Emerson 
and Margaret Fuller, 357, 
358. 

Alcott, Mrs. A. B., 357. 

Alcott, Louisa M., 255, 256, 

317, 357- 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 317, 
319 ; his Story of a Bad Boy, 
320. 

Allen, Mrs. Elizabeth Akers, 
" Florence Percy," her Rock 
me to Sleep, and the contro- 
versy over, 189, 191 ; 317, 375. 

American Sentinel, Poore's, J. 
T. T.'s connection with, 157, 
158. 



Appleton, Thomas G., on Long- 
fellow's scholarship, 423. 

Ararat, Jewish " City of Re- 
fuge," in Niagara River, 96. 

Arlington, Mass., formerly West 
Cambridge, 266; J. T. T.'s 
home in, 267, 457. 

Arlington Lake, or Spy Pond, 
267, 445-447- 

Arnold, Matthew, 415. 

Atlantic Monthly, 233, 241-248, 
250-252 ; acquired by Tick- 
nor & Fields, 257, 258 ; 323, 
3 2 4- 

Backwoods home of author's 
boyhood, 8-23. 

Bacon, Delia, 374. 

Bacon - Shakespeare contro- 
versy, 378, 379, 400. 

Ball, Dr. A. M. W., his claim to 
the authorship of Rock me 
to Sleep, 190, 191. 

Balzac, Honore de, 115. 

Banks, N. P., in Massachusetts 
Legislature, 234 ; at New Or- 
leans, 302, 303. 

Barnum, Phineas T., showman, 
162, 165, 182. 

Bartlett, George B., 256. 

Bartlett, John, 238. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 349, 373, 
4". 



466 



INDEX 



Bellows, Dr. H. W., 254. 
Beranger, Pierre Jean de, 122. 
Billings, Hammatt, artist, 204. 
Blair's Rhetoric, 46. 
Blizzard on Illinois prairies, 77, 

78. 
Boarding houses, Duane St., 

New York, 90, 91, 102, 149; 

No. 33 Brattle St., Boston, 

134, 135; Beach St., Boston, 

175. 176. 

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savan- 
nah, Ga., 307, 308. 

Bonner, Robert, buys Longfel- 
low's Hanging of the Crane 
for the Ledger, 431, 432. 

Book of Gold, The, and Other 
Poems, 331. 

Booth, Edwin, actor, 452. 

Booth, Junius Brutus, father of 
preceding, 452. 

Boston, J. T. T.'s residence in, 
1 32 et seq. 

Bound in Honor, writing of, 330. 

Brainerd, J. G. C, 434. 

Brattle St. Church, Boston, and 
its 24-lb. shot, 134, 135. 

Brockport, N. Y., academy at, 
86-88. 

Brown, Goold, English Gram- 
mar, 51. 

Brown, John, scene of trial and 
execution of, 271-273. 

Brown, Charles Farrar, " Arte- 
mus Ward," 18 r, 182. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
her Vision of Poets, 184. 

Browning, Robert, 335. 

Brownlow, William G., (" Par- 
son,") see Taylor, (" Father,") 
governor of Tennessee, 289, 
290. 

Bryant, William Cullen, 190,448. 



Bucolics of Virgil, 80. 

Burleigh Brothers, at anti-slav- 
ery meetings, 168. 

Burns, Anthony, fugitive slave, 
rendition of, 211, 218-224. 

Burns, Robert, Poems, 81, 84, 
94. 

Burritt, Elijah H., Astronomy 
and Geography of the Heav- 
ens, 52. 

Burroughs, John, clerk in U. S. 
Treasury, 374 ; his champion- 
ship of Walt Whitman, 375, 

39 1 - 

Butler, Gen. Benj. F., at New 
Orleans, 302, 303. 

Butler, William Allen, his No- 
thing to Wear claimed by 
Miss Peck, 191. 

Butterworth, Hezekiah, 329. 

Byron, Lord, 45, 54, 57, 94, 184, 
l8 5» 335> 402. 

Cabin, The, poem read at the 
celebration of Mrs. Stowe's 
seventieth birthday, 413, 414. 

Cafe des Mille Colonnes, its 
band concerts, 127, 128. 

Calvinism, shadow of, 26-32 ; 
203. 

Cambridge Village (Newton), 
James Trowbridge settles in, 

3- 
Canal, Erie, 12, 13, 62, 63, 72, 

89, 321. 
"Carleton" (C. C. Coffin), 

320. 
Carleton, Will, his Betsy and I 

are Out claimed by another 

writer, 191. 
Carlyle, Thomas, letters to a 

friend in America, 84 ; on 

troupe of ballet girls, 115; 



INDEX 



467 



J. T. T.'s early admiration 

for, 335- 
Carpet Lag, The, Boston weekly 

paper, 179, 181-183, 185. 
Carpet Bagger in Pennsylvania, 

A, magazine papers, 256. 
Carter, Robert, 236, 238, 240. 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 440. 
Chadwick, Charles, shipbroker, 

141-149. 
Chance for Himself, A, sequel 

to Jack Hazard, 322. 
Chancellorsville, battle-field of, 

278, 279. 
Channing, Dr. William F., Al- 

cott Conversation at the house 

of, 354-356- 

Charleston, S. C, scenes in har- 
bor of, 308, 309 ; city of, after 
the war, 309. 

Chase, Hon. Salmon P., let- 
ter from, used to advertise 
Cudjo's Cave, 263, 264 ; his 
interest in J. T. T.'s Southern 
tour, 273, 274; Secretary of 
the Treasury, 370, 374 ; per- 
sonal characteristics, 370, 37 1 ; 
Washington home, 377 ; dis- 
approves of Lincoln's stories, 
yet repeats one, 372, 373 ; 
compared with Walt Whit- 
man, 384 ; declines to give 
Whitman an appointment, 
387, 388. 

Chicago, site of, in 1835, 20 > m 

i845» 73- 

Child, Dr. and Mrs. George, 
102-112, 143. 

Choate, Rufus, his famous say- 
ing, 35°- 

Church-going sixty years ago, 
27, 28. 



Ciurchill, Prof. J. W., elocu- 
tionist, 255. 
Cicero, Orations of, 62. 
Civil War, breaking out of, 259, 

260. 
Claflin, Ex-Gov. Wm., Stowe 

Garden Party at residence of, 

411. 
Clark, John S., of J. R. Osgood 

& Co., 322. 
Clarke, Rev. James Freeman, 

Dr. Holmes's "double," 415. 
Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., pensioned 

by Bonner, 432. 
Cochituate water, introduced 

into Boston, 1 59-161. 
Coleridge, S. T., his Ancient 

Mariner, 336, 337. 
Colfax, Schuyler, 373. 
Collins, Gen. Patrick A., at the 

Moore Festival, 409. 
Columbia, S.C., destruction of, 

31 1 ; visited after the war, 

3II-3I3- 

Commissary, United States, is- 
suing " destitute rations," 282, 
283. 

Confederate Capitol, after the 
war, 280-282. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, some 
novels of, 44, 45. 

Copyright law, sometimes a 
precarious protection, 192. 

Coupon Bonds, story, some ac- 
count of, 255, 256. 

Coupon Bonds and Other 
Stories, 324. 

Court House, Boston, converted 
into a fortress, and assailed, 
220-223. 

Craft, Ellen and William, fugi- 
tive slaves, 218, 225. 



468 



INDEX 



Cram, professor of pugilism, 

196. 
Crawford, Thomas, his equestri- 
an statue of Washington, 280. 
" Creyton, Paul," pseudonym, 

118. 
Croly, Rev. George, his Sala- 

thiel, 45. 
Crooker, Isaac, publisher of 

The Yankee Nation, 155, 156. 
Cudjo's Cave, war novel, 259- 

265, 286. 
Cushman, Charlotte, American 

actress, 452. 

Dana, Richard, marries Lydia 
Trowbridge, 3. 

Dana, Richard Henry, defends 
fugitive slave Burns, 219. 

Darius Green and his Flying 
Machine, 319. 

Darley, Felix O. C, artist, 255. 

Darwin, Charles, on the Origin 
of Species, 453, 454. 

Davis, Jefferson, President of 
Confederate States, 180 ; in 
church when he received news 
that Richmond was lost, 281 ; 
his threat to lay waste North- 
ern cities with sword and 
torch, 313. 

Dial, The, organ of New Eng- 
land Transcendentalists, 240. 

Diaz, Mrs. Abby M., her Wil- 
liam Henry Letters, 320. 

Dickens, Charles, 122; novels 
in monthly numbers, 203; con- 
tributor to Our Young Folks, 
317, 318 ; 335 ; as reader and 
personator, 452, 453. 

Dodge, Mrs. Mary Mapes, con- 
ductor of St. Nicholas, 325. 

Dodge, Ossian E., buys Jenny 



Lind ticket for $625, 161- 
164 ; vicarious author of comic 
songs, 164 ; his collections of 
coins, 164, 165; sketched as 
"Killings," in Martin Mer- 
rivale, 165 ; successful self- 
advertising, 165, 166. 

Doing his Best, 3d Jack Haz- 
ard story, 322. 

Dorchester, Mass., Thomas 
Trowbridge's settlement in, 2. 

Douglass, Frederick, ex-slave 
and anti-slavery orator, 168, 
169. 

Drummer Boy, The, war story, 
260. 

Duluth, Minn., in 1869, 2 57- 

Dumas, Alexandre, the elder, 
his Monte Christo and Les 
Trois Mousquetaires, 116. 

Du Page River, East Branch of, 
73- 

East Tennessee, after the war, 
264, 285-287. 

Elocution, first principles of, 68, 
352 ; exercise in, 68. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 174; 
connection with the Dial, 240 ; 
declines to furnish letters of 
introduction, 245 ; contribu- 
tor to the Atlantic Monthly, 
242 ; poem wrongly attributed 
to, 246; his Brahma, 246, 
2 47 5 3 2 3 J early misconcep- 
tions regarding, 336, 337 ; in- 
fluence of his writings on 
J. T. T., 336, 339 ; capable of 
a righteous resentment, 340, 
341 ; J. T. T.'s first meeting 
with, 343-345 ; at a Saturday 
Club dinner, 346, 347 ; per- 
sonal appearance and pnre- 



INDEX 



469 



nology, 347, 348 ; on the lec- 
ture platform, 348-350; 354; 
at an Alcott Conversation, 
355-356 ; his estimate of Al- 
cott, 345, 358 ; early letter to 
Walt Whitman, 3S5, 386 ; let- 
ters recommending Whitman 
for a government appoint- 
ment, 385-389 ; on styles of 
architecture, 404 ; at Whittier 
Banquet, his reading of Icha- 
bod, 426-428 ; his faulty ear, 
442, 443; 448; at Longfel- 
low's funeral, 450. 

Emigrant's Story, The, and 
Other Poems, 324. 

English royal family, members 
of, write for Youth's Compan- 
ion, 329. 

Erie Canal, see Canal, Erie. 

Essay on Man, Pope's, 46. 

Ethan Brand, Hawthorne's 
tale, adventures of, 120. 

Everett, Edward, 349. 

Evolution, Theory of, 32, 354, 
453. 454. 

Farrar, Dr. Calvin, hydro- 
pathist, 181. 

Fast Friends, 4th Jack Hazard 
story, 149, 3 22 > 3 2 5- 

Father Brighthopes, 194-196. 

Field, Eugene, 198, footnote. 

Fields, Mrs. Annie, 252. 

Fields, James T., publisher and 
editor, on The Vagabonds, 
252; names the dog in that 
poem, 252, 253 ; 258, 270 ; in- 
vites J. T. T.'s cooperation 
in establishing Our Young 
Folks, 317; 3 I 8,3 I 9>3 22 >33 1 - 

Fields, Osgood & Co., 318, 

3 l 9> 3 22 - 



Filling an Order, poem read at 

the Holmes Breakfast, 409- 

411. 
Fish story, an illustrative, 335. 
Fitchburg Hall, Jenny Lind 

concert in, 166-168. 
Foot-stove, construction and use 

of, 17, 27. 
Ford, Daniel S., " Perry Mason 

& Co.," 326-330. 
Forrest, Edwin, American actor, 

45 2 - 

Foster, Stephen S., anti-slavery 
agitator, 169. 

Fowler, L. N., phrenologist, his 
hits and failures, 122, 123. 

Framingharn. Mass., ancestral 
home of the Trowbridge fam- 
ily. 3- 

Fredericksburg, Va., after the 
war, 274-276. 

Freedmen's Bureau, observa- 
tions on, 292-295 ; work of, 
295, 296. 

Fremont, Gen. John C, nomi- 
nation of, for the Presidency, 

435. 
French Colony in New York in 

1848, 112. 
French language, as learned by 

eye and ear, 131, 132. 
Fugitive Slave Law, created 

anti-slavery sentiment, 215; 

supported by Webster, 429. 
Fuller, Sarah Margaret, her con- 
nection with the Dial, 240 ; 

association with Alcott, and 

estimate of, 358. 

Garfield, Gen. James A., 274, 

373- 
Garrison, William Lloyd, aboli- 
tionist, 168, 170, 215. 



470 



INDEX 



Genesee Country, the, 4, 6. 

Genesee Falls, 7 ; tragedy at, 
39,4o; 71. 

Geneseo, village of, 48, 49. 

Genin, " the hatter," his fortune 
made by a Jenny Lind ticket, 
162. 

Gettysburg, battle-field of, 256. 

Gibbes, Mayor of Columbia, 
S.C.,311. 

Gibson, a classmate of Carlyle, 
82, 8 3 . 

Gillem, Gen. Alvan C, in com- 
mand at Chattanooga, 288. 

Goethe, his Hermann und Doro- 
thea, 422. 

Gold pencil-case engraving, 
104-108. 

"Grandmother Rigglesty," char- 
acter in Neighbor Jackwood, 
39 ; as acted by Mrs. Thomp- 
son, 230. 

Grant, Gen. U. S., his famous 
saying, 278 ; his body servant, 
288 ; change of habits after 
the battle of Shiloh, 288; 
scene of Pemberton's surren- 
der to, 299. 

Greeley, Horace, 254, 373. 

Greene, Charles Gordon, jour- 
nalist, 183. 

Greene, Daniel, marries J. T. 
T.'s oldest sister, 18 ; in Illi- 
nois, 72, 73, 79, 80. 

Greene, George Washington, 
historian, 445. 

Greene, Venilia Trowbridge, 
marriage and emigration to 
Illinois, 18-20 ; 72, 73 ; com- 
ment on The Vagabonds, 253. 

Griswold, Rufus W., his Poets 
of America, 65 ; Prose 
Writers of America, 338. 



Gulf of Mexico, steamboat voy- 
age on, 305. 
Gulliver's Travels, 46. 
Guy Vernon, novelette in verse, 

331- 

Gymnasium, Professor Cram's, 
196. 

Hackett, James H., as " Fal- 
staff," 115. 

Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 
161; preaching in Worcester, 
197, 198, and note; 317. 

Hale, Lucretia P., 317. 

Hale, Nathan, Boston water 
commissioner, 161. 

Halpine, Charles Graham, Bar- 
num's private secretary, 182 ; 
contributor to Boston news- 
papers, 183 ; his Lyrics by 
the Letter H., 184; affair of 
honor with Handiboe, 186, 
187 ; adjutant-general in the 
Civil War, 187, 188; Miles 
O'Reilly papers, 188 ; death, 
188. 

" Hamilton, Gail " (pseudonym 
of Abigail Dodge), her con- 
nection with Our Young 
Folks, 318; Battle of the 
Books, 318. 

Handiboe, E. J., his challenge 
of Halpine, and the reasons 
therefor, 185, 186. 

Hanging of the Crane, The, his- 
tory of, 431, 432. 

Harlan, James, Secretary of the 
Interior, 390. 

Harvard Medical College, tra- 
gedy at, 154. 

Hawley, J. R., General and Sen- 
ator, 280, 281. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, adven- 



INDEX 



471 



tares of his manuscript story, 
Ethan Brand, 120; 240, 412, 
436. 

Hayden, Lewis, attempts rescue 
of fugitive slave Burns, 220, 
221. 

Hayes, Dr. Isaac I., his Cast 
Away in the Cold, 320. 

Hemans, Felicia, 47. 

Henry, Patrick, his famous 
speech, where delivered, 281. 

Hexameters, classic, adaptation 
of in English, 421, 422. 

Hicks, Richard " H.," 276-278. 

Higginson, Thomas Went- 
worth, preaching in Worces- 
ter, 199 ; attempts rescue of 
fugitive slave Burns, 220, 
221. 

His Own Master, minor novel, 
326. 

Historical Reader, 51. 

Hoar, Hon. George F., in the 
Massachusetts House of 
Representatives, 234. 

" Holden's Dollar Magazine," 
101. 

Holland, Dr. J. G., 325. 

" Holmes, Augustus," pseudo- 
nym of J. T. T., subjects 
treated under, 320. 

Holmes, John, 238. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, his 
comment on Mrs. Thompson's 
" Grandmother Rigglesty," 
230 ; at informal dinners, 238 ; 
first Autocrat papers, 247, 
248 ; christens The Atlantic 
Monthly, 244, and proposes 
The Atlantic Lighter for 
Our Young Folks, 317 ; on 
instructors in the Medical 
College, 328 ; 347 I J- T. T.'s 



early interviews with, 402 
403 ; vivacity at table, and 
anecdotes of, 404, 405 ; Brah- 
minical exclusiveness, 406 ; 
the Professor papers, and cor- 
respondence regarding, 406, 
407 ; at the Moore Festival, 
408, 409 ; at the Breakfast cel- 
ebrating his seventieth birth- 
day, 409-411; comment on 
Filling an Order, 411 ; at 
Claflin-Stowe Garden Party, 
411-414 ; his " Double," 415 ; 
mental characteristics, 416 ; 
place in American literature, 
417 ; occasional poems, 423, 
424; at Whittier Banquet, 
426; his Hunt for the Cap- 
tain, 429 ; 448. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 
" Captain " and eminent ju- 
rist, 429, 430. 

Home Idyl, A, and Other 
Poems, 331. 

Homer, Pope's, 115. 

Hooker, Gen., " Fighting Joe," 
scene of his "battle in the 
clouds," 288. 

Hotchkiss & Co., Boston news- 
dealers, 150, 155. 

Howard, Gen. O. O., his cheer- 
ing advice, 273. 

Howe, Dr. Estes, 237. 

Howells, William D., editor of 
the Atlantic Monthly, 319; 
on Walt Whitman, 369. 

Hudibras, Butler's, 94. 

Hugo, Victor, his Le Dernier 
Jour d'un Condamne, 116; 
La Legende des Siecles, re- 
viewed by Taylor, 443. 

Hume, David, his History of 
England, 44. 



472 



INDEX 



Illinois River, steamboat 

travel on, in 1853, 201 - 
Ingraham, J. H., his Lafitte, 

45- 
" Interviewers," ways of, 334. 

Jack Hazard and his For- 
tunes, how written, 321. 

Jackson, Dr. Charles T., 405. 

James, G. P. R., novels of, 45. 

Jenkins, Amaziah, grammarian 
and abolitionist, 69, 70. 

Jersey City, N. J., J. T. T.'s life 
in, 104. 

Jewett, J. P. & Co., 241. 

Keats, John, 335. 

Kellogg, Elijah, 320. 

Kennedy, Mayor of New Or- 
leans, 1865-66, 303. 

" Killings," character in Martin 
Merrivale, 165. 

Kimball, Moses, proprietor of 
Boston Museum, 233. 

Kimberley, Miss, actress, Vol- 
taire's Semiramis translated 
and adapted for, 207-210. 

Kingsley, Charles, observation 
on Longfellow, 419. 

Kittredge, Mrs., boarding-house 
keeper, 135. 

Kossuth, Louis, 349. 

La Fontaine, Jean de, 82. 
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 115, 

116. 
Lamb, Charles, 183. 
Larcom, Lucy, 318. 
Lawrence's Adventures, topics 

comprised in, 320. 
Leaves of Grass, see Whitman, 

Walt. 
Lee, Robert E., .Confederate 



general, his dispatch an- 
nouncing the loss of Rich- 
mond, 281. 

Lee, William, of Phillips, Samp- 
son & Co., 242. 

Le Sage, his Gil Bias, 116. 

Levees of the Mississippi, 301. 

Library, circulating, in early 
settlement, 44 and note. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 250, 259, 
370-372. 

Lind, Jenny, concerts in Amer- 
ica, 161-168 ; 182, 451, 452. 

Little Master, The, minor novel, 
86, 330. 

Locke, John, On the Human 
Understanding, 46. 

Lockport, N. Y., J. T. T.'s life 
in, 62-72 ; teaching school in, 
81-86; 200. 

Log house, J. T. T.'s birth- 
place, 8-10. 

Longfellow, Henry W., 242, 
246, 247 ; a reading of The 
Vagabonds at the house of, 
252 ; contributor to Our 
Young Folks, 318 ; advice to 
J. T. T., 330 ; 347 ; comment 
on Emerson's Essays, 341 ; 
400, 412, 415, 416; J. T. T.'s 
first meeting with, 418, 419; 
personal appearance, 419, 
420; on a certain class of 
critics, 420, 421 ; Hiawatha, 
421 ; Evangeline, 421, 423 ; 
Poe's attacks upon, 421-423 ; 
occasional poems, 423, 424; 
at the Whittier Banquet, 425, 

426, and his comments on, 

427, 428; attitude towards 
slavery, 428-430 ; prices re- 
ceived by, for early poems, 
430, 431 ; contributes to the 



INDEX 



473 



New York Ledger, 431, 432 ; 
unconscious borrowing of 
ideas by him and others, 433- 
438 ; in his Cambridge home, 
438-441 ; comments on con- 
temporaries, 442, 443; ways 
with children, 444-446; on 
the shores of Spy Pond, 446 ; 
his last letter to J. T. T., 447 ; 
his enduring fame, 448-450; 
characterized by Emerson, 

45°- 

Lookout Mountain, ascent of, 
288. 

Loring, Edward G., U. S. Com- 
missioner, remands Anthony 
Burns to slavery, 218-220. 

Lost Earl, The, and Other 
Poems, 331. 

Lowell, James Russell, writes 
Ode for Cochituate Water 
Festival, 1 59-161 ; at Elm- 
wood in 1854, 235-238 ; ap- 
pointed Harvard professor 
and sails for Europe, 239; 
starts The Pioneer, with Rob- 
ert Carter, 240 ; edits the At- 
lantic Monthly, 244-248 ; con- 
tributes to Our Young Folks, 
318 ; 347 ; his characteriza- 
tion of Walt Whitman, 392 ; 
404,412,436; his borrowings 
from Longfellow and Shelley, 
437, 438 ; 440. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., his 
Lays of Ancient Rome, 184 ; 

335- 

Mackinaw, Straits of, 73. 

Mad River, tributary to Otter 

Creek, 226. 
"Manton," character in Fast 

Friends, 149. 



Martin Merrivale, novel, 165, 
203-205, 218, 225, 226. 

Matches, first friction ("luci- 
fer"), 17,18. 

Mathews, Prof. William, 192, 

193- 

McLees, Archibald, engraver, 
121-123. 

Mead, Edwin D., 319. 

Melodeon, Boston, Theodore 
Parker preaches in, 168-170; 
anti-slavery meetings held in, 
168, 169. 

Menotomy Lake, poem written 
at Mr. Longfellow's sugges- 
tion, 446, 447. 

Merry Wives of Windsor, 
Hackett as " Falstaff " in, 
114, 115. 

Milton, his Paradise Lost, 51. 

Minerva Jones, The, fitted for 
voyage to the California 
coast, 147, 148. 

Minnesota, trips to the wilds of, 
201, 257. 

Mirror of the Fair, The, J. T. 
T.'s editorship of, 157. 

Moliere, 122. 

Monroe, Lewis Baxter, his in- 
terest in the writing of Jack- 
wood, 227 ; 239 ; remark on 
Emerson's voice, 349 ; at an 
Alcott Conversation, 350- 
352 ; his great work, 352. 

Montaigne, 335. 

Moore, Thomas, his centennial 
celebrated in Boston, 408, 
409. 

Moosehead Lake, trip to, in 
1849, 136-141. 

Morituri Salutamis, Longfel- 
low's poem, occasion of, 
424. 



474 



INDEX 



Morton, Dr. William T. G., his 
discovery of anaesthesia, 206, 
207, 405- 

Motley, J. L., historian, 247. 

Moulton, Mrs. Louise Chandler, 
188, 189. 

Mount Kineo, Maine, 138. 

Munn, Dr., oculist, operation 

by, 52, 53- 
Murdock, James E., actor, 255. 
Music Hall, Boston, Theodore 

Parker preaches in, 170-174. 

Nashville, anniversary of bat- 
tle of, 289. 

National Era, Uncle Tom's 
Cabin in clippings from, 
242. 

Neighbor Jackwood, the novel, 
39; the writing of, 211-232; 
240, 262, 263, 364. 

Neighbor Jackwood, the play, 
229-232, 240. 

New Orleans, city of, in 1865-66, 
301, 302. 

Newton, Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo, 
265-267, 350, 363. 

New Year's Address, prize, 63- 
67 ; 214, note. 

New York city, a May morning 
in, 89, 90 ; J. T. T.'s life in, 
89 et seq. 

Niagara Courier, 63-66. 

Niagara Falls, 6^, 71, 72. 

Niblo's Garden in 1848, 112, 
114, 115, 124. 

Nine Oaks, Illinois farm, 73. 

Noah, Major Mordecai M., jour- 
nalist and playwright, 95 ; his 
Utopian " City of Refuge," at 
Niagara Falls, 96 ; friendly 
aid and advice to J. T. T., 
96-101 ; 121, 250, 459. 



O'Connor, William Doug- 
las, leaves literature for a 
government office, 373 ; in 
the Lighthouse Board, 374 ; 
his novel, Harrington, 375 ; 
championship of unpopular 
causes, 375 ; intimacy with 
Walt Whitman, 376-378 ; his 
brilliant defense of, 390, 391. 

Ogden, Monroe Co., N. Y., J. 
T. T.'s birthplace, 6, 12; its 
centennial celebration, 44, 
note ; revisited, 177, 321. 

Olive Branch, weekly paper, J. 
T.T.'s contributions, 136, 137. 

Ontario, Lake, 13, 71. 

O'Reilly, John Boyle, poet and 
journalist, at the Moore Fes- 
tival, 409. 

Origin of Species, The, Dar- 
win's, 354, 453, 454. 

Orr, Governor, of South Caro- 
lina, 311. 

Osgood, James R., publisher, 

3 22 » 3 2 3- 
Otter Creek, in valley of the 

Green Mountains, 225, 226. 
Our Young Folks magazine, 

159, 3!7-3 2 3» 3 2 7. 

Parker, Rev. Theodore, 
preaching at the Melodeon, 
168-170 ; at Music Hall, 170- 
J 73 ; J- T. T.'s sonnet to, 171, 
337 ; compared with the devil, 
172; in his library, 172, 173; 
conservative radicalism of, 
174; at the rendition of fugi- 
tive slave Burns, 220; con- 
tributor to the Dial, 240; 
censure of Longfellow for 
subserviency to the slave 
power, 429. 



INDEX 



475 



Parker, Theodore D., Boston 
merchant, advised to write 
the D in his name conspicu- 
ously plain, 169. 

Parkman, Rev. Francis, Uni- 
tarian divine, 153. 

Parkman, Francis, historian, 
153. 238. 

Parkman, Dr. George, his dis- 
appearance and tragic end, 

I52-I55- 
Parny, French poet, his La 

Guerre des Dieux, 116. 

Parton, James, 317. 

Passy, France, summer at, 226, 
227. 

Pawnbroker's establishment, 
scene in, 126, 127. 

Pemberton, John C., Confeder- 
ate general, scene of his sur- 
render to Grant, 299. 

Pembroke, N. Y., a vacation 
at, 67-70. 

Pennsylvania coal and oil re- 
gions, 256, 320. 

People's Journal, of London, 
Howitt's, reprints story by J. 
T. T., 101. 

" Percy, Florence," pseudonym, 
see Allen, Mrs. E. A. 

Perrault, M., leader of Niblo's 
orchestra, 109, no, n 2-1 16, 
129-132. 

Perrault, Mme., 109, no, 112, 
113; her one fault, 130, 131; 
death of, 202. 

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 317. 

Phelps, Mrs. Fidelia Trow- 
bridge, 62. 

Phillips, Moses D., publisher, 
193-195, 197, 198; his esti- 
mate of Rev. E. E. Hale, 197, 
198 and note; of Neighbor 



Jackwood, 228 ; declines 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, 243; 
undertakes Atlantic Monthly, 
244; death, 248; 257, 340, 
342, 343- 
Phillips, Sampson & Co., 192, 
203, 234, 241-243, 248, 259, 

323> 324, 339- 
Phillips, Wendell, anti-slavery 

orator, 168, 215, 220; his 

voice, 349. 
Phrenology, 122, 123, 347, 348. 
Pickard, S. T., his Life of 

Whittier, 425 ; 426-427 note. 
Pierpont, Governor of Virginia, 

280. 
Pillsbury, Parker anti-slavery 

agitator, 169. 
Plato, 335, 353. 
Plutarch, 45. 
Pocket Rifle, The, minor novel, 

33°- 

Poe, Edgar Allan, his Sleeper, 
184 ; contributor to Lowell's 
Pioneer, 240 ; J. T. T.'s early 
passion for, 335; attacks on 
Longfellow, 421-423 ; 448. 

Poets of America, Griswold's, 
65. 

Pontchartrain, Lake, evening 
on, 304, 305- 

Poore, Ben : Perley, publishes 
The Mirror of the Fair, 157; 
The American Sentinel, 1 58 ; 
objects to J. T. T.'s turning 
the Sentinel into an anti- 
slavery paper, 216-218. 

Pope, Alexander, his Essay on 
Man, and Homer, 45, 46. 

Prescott, William H., historian, 

3 2 4. 
Prospect Hill, Somerville, Mass., 
old earthworks on, 265, 266; 



476 



INDEX 



J. T. T.'s residence on, 265, 
266, 363, 369. 

Psalm of Life, Longfellow's, 
price paid for by the Knicker- 
bocker Magazine, 430, 431. 

Public Garden, Boston, in 1848, 

135- 
Putnam, Israel, Revolutionary 
general, provokes the mirth 
of Washington, 441. 

Quincy, Edmund, 238. 

Quincy, Josiah, mayor of Bos- 
ton in 1848, 160. 

Quincy, Josiah, mayor of Bos- 
ton, grandson of preceding, 
160. 

Quitman, The, Mississippi 
steamboat in 1865, 299-301. 

Rachel, French tragic actress, 

452. 
Rattlesnakes, prairie, 75-77. 
Read, Thomas Buchanan, his 

painting of Longfellow's 

daughters, 440. 
Recollections of Lalla Rookh, 

poem read at the Moore 

Festival, 409 note. 
Reid, Mayne, his Afloat in the 

Forest, 320. 
Reid, Whitelaw, 273. 
Rhetorical Reader, Porter's, 51. 
Richmond, Va., after the Civil 

War, 279-283. 
Ristori, Italian actress, 452. 
Roberts, George, gets Voltaire's 

Semiramis adapted for Miss 

Kimberley by J. T. T., 207, 

208 ; his valuable autograph, 

208, 210. 
Rochester, N. Y., site of, in 

1812, 7. 



Rogers, Samuel, banker-poet, 

440. 
Rollin's Ancient History, 45. 
Rossetti, William, editor of 

English edition of Leaves of 

Grass, points out a blunder 

of Whitman's, 394. 
Rowse, S. W., artist, illustrator 

of Martin Merrivale, 204. 
Russell, Sol Smith, actor and 

personator, 254. 

Sabbath-keeping sixty years 

ago, 26-28. 
St. Anthony, Falls of, in 1853 

and 1869, 201. 
St. Nicholas, magazine for 

young people, 323, 325, 326. 
Salvini, Tommaso, Italian actor, 

45 2 - 
Sampson, Charles, of Phillips, 

Sampson & Co., 204, 241, 257. 
Sanborn, F. B., his Life of Al- 

cott quoted, 357, 359. 
Sand, George (Mme. Dude- 

vant), 115, 116. 
Sandeau, Jules, 115. 
Sargent, Epes, editor of Boston 

Transcript, 171 ; 336, 337 ; 

"skipped" by R. W. Emer- 
son, 340, 341. 
Saturday Club, at a dinner of, 

346, 347- 
Savannah, city of, in 1866, 307. 
Schiller, 82. 
School, district, of the olden 

time, 40, 41, 78, 79, 81-86. 
Scott, Sir Walter, his Ivanhoe, 

44, 51 ; Lady of the Lake, 

45 5 54,84,94, 122,335. 
Scribe, Augustine Eugene, 

French author, his Pequillo 

Alliaga and dramas, 116. 



INDEX 



477 



Seaver Place, Boston, J. T. T.'s 
residence in, 176, 177, 194, 
218, 265. 

Sedgwick, Rev. Mr., abolition- 
ist minister, 212, 213. 

Semiramis, Voltaire's, trans- 
lated and adapted for Miss 
Kimberley, 207-210. 

Seward, William H., Lincoln's 
Secretary of State, 372. 

Shadrach, fugitive slave, 218, 
219. 

Shakespeare, 45, 51, 335, 377, 
378, 379> 399. 400. 

Shelley, 335. 

Sheridan, Gen. P. H„ at New 
Orleans in 1865-66, 303, 304. 

Sherman, John, Senator, 373. 

Sherman, Gen. William T., his 
" march to the sea," 289 ; 
his "gloves," 305, 306; track 
of his army through Georgia, 
305, 308 ; at Columbia, 311. 

Shillaber, Benjamin P., (" Mrs. 
Partington,") 179, 180, 183, 
185. 

Silver Medal, The, story for the 
young, 330, 457. 

Simms, Thomas, fugitive slave, 
218, 219. 

Simms, William Gilmore, 
Southern novelist, 310, 311. 

Sindbad the Sailor, spectacular 
play, 233. 

Skerritt, Rose, actress, as 
" Bim " in Neighbor Jack- 
wood, 229, 230. 

Slavery question, agitation of, 
168, 169, 212-215. 

Sleigh-riding on the Illinois 
prairies, 77. 

Smith, Roswell, publisher of St. 
Nicholas, 325. 



Smith, W. H. Sedley, stage- 
manager and actor, 229. 
Snake-bite, popular remedy for, 

77- 

Soulie, Frederic, French author, 
116. 

South, The, book of travels in 
the desolated States after the 
Civil War, 267-270, 284, 285, 
3i4-3 J 6. 

Southerners, typical, after the 
war, 275-278, 283, 284, 286, 
287, 289, 290-292, 300, 301, 
306,307,310,311,313. 

Spectator, Addison's, 46. 

Spencer's Basin, or Spenceport, 
in the town of Ogden, 11, 12, 
321. 

Spenser, Edmund, quoted, 353. 

Spiritualism, 454, 455. 

Spottsylvania, battle-field of, 
276, 278, 279. 

Sprague, Mrs. Kate Chase, 373. 

Sprague, William, senator from 
Rhode Island, 373. 

Stage-coach travel, Western, in 
1853, 202. 

Stebbins, L., Hartford publisher, 
267-270, 285. 

Stockton, Frank R., 325. 

Stoddard, Mr. and Mrs. Rich- 
ard Henry, 232. 

Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, 
invites J. T. T. to her home, 
174; nicknamed by Halpine, 
183 ; her Uncle Tom, 242- 
244 ; Dred, 228, 243 ; contrib- 
utor to Atlantic Monthly, 244- 
246; to Our Young Folks, 
317 ; celebration of her seven- 
tieth birthday, 411-414. 

Strother, Gen. David H., 
" Porte Crayon," 280. 



478 



INDEX 



Sue, Eugene, novels of, 115, 116. 

Sumner, Charles, 349, 428. 

Suttle, Charles F., Virginia 
slaveholder, 219. 

Swedenborg, his law of corre- 
spondences, 353. 

Syracuse, N. Y., a frontier set- 
tlement, 7. 

Taunton, Eng., ancestral home 
of Trowbridges, 1. 

Taylor, Bayard, 254, 268, 317 ; 
his feat in reviewing Hugo's 
La Legende des Siecles, 443 ; 
Longfellow's estimate of, 443- 

Taylor, Edward T., (" Father,") 
on a trip to Moosehead Lake, 
137-141; 146. 

Tennyson, Alfred, his superior- 
ity to Poe, 335 ; 400, 442. 

Terry, Gen. Alfred H., 280, 281. 

Terry, Rose, 317. 

Thackeray, William Make- 
peace, 203, 335. 

Thaxter, Celia, 317. 

Thomas, Gen. George H., 290. 

Thompson, Mrs., actress, takes 
out her teeth playing "Grand- 
mother Rigglesty," 230. 

Three Scouts, The, war story, 
262. 

Ticknor & Fields, house of, 257, 
258, 316, 323, 324. 

Ticknor, Howard M., 318. 

Tinkham Brothers' Tide-Mill, 
The, minor novel, 326. 

Toby Trafford, where written, 
326. 

Townsend, John, Westmore- 
land farmer, 3, 4. 

Townsend, John, the younger, 
4 ; his name and his silver 
half-dollar, 4-6. 



Transcendentalism, New Eng- 
land, 240. 

Tremont Temple, auction sale 
of Jenny Lind tickets in, 162- 
164 ; concerts, 166. 

Tribune, New York, letters to, 

233- 

Trowbridge ancestry and fam- 
ily, 1-3 and note. 

Trowbridge, Cornelia Warren, 
266. 

Trowbridge, John, major in war 
of the Revolution, 3. 

Trowbridge, John Townsend, 
named for his father's foster 
brother, 4 ; his first silver half- 
dollar, and his great flock of 
sheep, 4-6; birth, 10, 11 ; 
backwoods home, 1 1-23 ; 
childish illusions, 21-25; early 
religious feelings, 25-32 ; gen- 
tle and savage traits, 41, 42 ; 
intellectual awakening, 42- 
47 ; first verse-making, 47 ; 
solitary studies and farm- 
work, 47-52 ; trouble with the 
eyes, and an operation, 51- 
53 ; first printed poem, 54- 
56 ; causeless melancholy and 
a real sorrow, 57, 58 ; leaving 
home, 58-62 ; attends school 
in Lockport, 62, 63; writes 
prize New Year's Address, 
63-67 ; vacation at Pembroke, 
67-70 ; trip by the Lakes to 
Illinois, 72, 73 ; life on the 
prairies, 74-78 ; teaches 
school in Illinois, 78, 79; 
rents land and raises crop of 
wheat, 79-81 ; teaches school 
in Lockport, N. Y., 81-86; 
enters Brockport Academy 
for one hour, 86-88 ; goes to 



INDEX 



479 



New York, 88, 89 ; in a city 
boarding-house, 90, 91 ; seeks 
employment, 92, 93, and a 
publisher for a volume of 
poems, 94 ; befriended by 
Major Noah, who aids him 
in selling a novelette, 95-100 ; 
contributes to Holden's Dol- 
lar Magazine, 101 ; removes 
to Jersey City, 104; engraves 
gold pencil-cases, 105-108 ; 
returns to New York, 109, 
1 10 ; life in a French family, 
1 1 2-1 1 6, 124-132 ; experi- 
ences as a writer, 117-121 ; 
sits for phrenological chart, 
122, 123 ; removes to Boston, 
132, 133 ; excursion to Moose- 
head Lake, 1 34-141 ; nar- 
rowly escapes being a " forty- 
niner," 1 41-148 ; edits The 
Yankee Nation, 149-156; 
The Mirror of the Fair, 157, 
and Poore's Sentinel, 158; 
at Jenny Lind concerts, 166- 
168 ; acquaintance with Theo- 
dore Parker and Mrs. Stowe, 
170-174 ; changes lodgings 
and habits, 175-177 ; revisits 
old homestead, 177 ; writes un- 
successful novel, 178; friend- 
ship with Shillaber, 179, 180; 
acts as Halpine's second in an 
affair "of honor," 186, 187; 
writes Father Brighthopes, 
193-196 ; at a water-cure es- 
tablishment, 197-200 ; jour- 
ney to the northwest, 200- 
202 ; writes Martin Merrivale, 
203-205 ; adapts Voltaire's 
Semiramis for Miss Kimber- 
ley, 207-209 ; visits Europe, 
209 ; witnesses rendition of the 



fugitive slave Burns, 218-224 ; 
Neighbor Jack wood, the 
novel, 226, 227, and the play, 
229-231 ; other dramatic 
work, 233 ; acquaintance with 
Underwood and Lowell, 233- 
240, and connection with the 
Atlantic Monthly, 244-256 ; 
journeys, 256, 257 ; Cudjo's 
Cave and other war stories, 
259-264; removes to Pros- 
pect Hill, 265 ; first marriage, 
266 ; second marriage, 267 ; 
removes to Arlington (West 
Cambridge), 267 ; engaged to 
write book about the South, 
at the close of the war, 
267-270 ; visits scene of John 
Brown's execution, 271-273; 
Washington, 273 ; Freder- 
icksburg, 274-276 ; Grant's 
battle-fields, 278, 279 ; Rich- 
mond, 279-284 ; return home, 
and serious illness, 284, 285 ; 
visits East Tennessee, 285- 
287 ; Lookout Mountain and 
Nashville, 288-290; observa- 
tions on Freedmen's Bureau, 
292-296 ; to Vicksburg and 
New Orleans, 296-304 ; on 
the track of Sherman's grand 
march, 305-30 7; at Savan- 
nah, 307, 308; Charleston, 
309-311 ; Columbia, 31 1-31 3; 
completes The South, 314 ; 
Our Young Folks, 317-319; 
contributions to, 316, 320 ; 
Jack Hazard stories, 221, 222, 
226 ; connection with St. 
Nicholas, 325, 326; with 
Youth's Companion, 326- 
330 ; best known not by his 
best work, 333 ; his literary 



48o 



INDEX 



passions, 335, 336 ; influenced 
by Emerson, 336-339 ; his 
first meeting with, 342-345; 
observations on Emerson and 
Alcott, 345-359; earl y ac- 
quaintance with Walt Whit- 
man and his writings, 360- 
370; guest of Hon. S. P. 
Ch?se, in Washington, 370- 
373 ; intercourse with Chase 
and Whitman, 373-391 5 ob- 
servations on Whitman, 391- 
401 ; first meetings with Dr. 
Holmes, 402, 403 ; corres- 
pondence with, 406-408, 41 1 ; 
appearance with, at the Moore 
Festival, 408, 409; reads 
poem at the Holmes Break- 
fast, 409-411 ; reads poem at 
the Stowe-Claflin Garden 
Party, 411-414; at the Whit- 
tier Birthday Banquet, 425, 
426-427 and note ; inter- 
course with Longfellow, and 
observations on, 427-450 ; 
investigations of spiritual- 
ism, 454, 455 5 " honors," 457, 
458; philosophy of life, 461, 
462. 

Trowbridge, Lydia, marries 
Richard Dana, 3. 

Trowbridge, Rebecca Willey, 
J. T. T.'s mother, 6-10; 28, 
29, 32-38; widowhood, 58-61 ; 
141. 

Trowbridge, Windsor, brother 
of J. T. T., 29. 

Trowbridge, Windsor Stone, 
father of J. T. T., birth and 
boyhood, 3, 4; emigrates to 
the Genesee Country, 4-8 ; 
talent for music and story- 
telling, 33-37 ; death, 57 ; on 



the slavery question, 213, 
214. 

Trowbridge, Windsor Warren, 
son of J. T. T., 266, 267, note. 

Tupper, Martin F., his Prover- 
bial Philosophy, 368. 

Two Biddicut Boys, minor 
novel, 326. 

Underwood, Francis H., 
234 ; literary adviser of Phil- 
lips, Sampson & Co., 234, 
235 ; his friendly offices, 235- 
238 ; projects the Atlantic 
Monthly, 241-244; assistant 
editor, 244-248 ; death in Ed- 
inburgh, 249; his Quabbin, 
249 ; report of an Emerson- 
Holmes conversation, 404 ; 
supper to Holmes, 405. 

Vagabonds, The, history of, 

250- 2 55- 

Vagabonds, The, and Other 
Poems, 255, 324. 

Vicksburg, after the war, 296, 
297 ; surrender of, 298 ; monu- 
ment commemorating, 299. 

Vigny, Alfred de, his Cinq- 
Mars, 46. 

Virgil, 69, 70, 80, 82. 

Voltaire, his La Pucelle, 116; 
Semiramis, translated and 
adapted by J. T. T., 207-210; 
his Soliloquy of Hamlet, re- 
translated by Lowell, 237. 

Wallingford, Vt., 204, 225. 
" Ward, Artemus," see Browne, 

Charles F. 
Ward, Samuel, negotiates sale 

of Longfellow's poems, 431, 

43 2 . 



INDEX 



481 



Warren, Dr. J. C, at Massachu- 
setts General Hospital, 206, 

207. 

Warren, William, comic actor, 
as " Enos Crumlett," 229. 

Washington, city of, in 1863, 
376, 377- 

Washington, Gen. George, on 
Prospect Hill, 265 ; his head- 
quarters in Cambridge, 439 ; 
how his gravity was once 
overcome, 441. 

Water-cure, at Worcester, au- 
thor's trial of, 197, 199, 200. 

Webster, Daniel, Parker's ser- 
mon on, 174; his last speech 
in Faneuil Hall, 349; advo- 
cacy of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, 429. 

Webster, Prof. John White, 
kills Dr. Parkman, 154; con- 
victe; and hanged, 154, 155. 

Wells, governor of Louisiana 
in 1 866, 303. 

"West, The," in first half of 
19th century, 19, 72. 

West Cambridge, see Arlington. 

Westmoreland, N. Y., home of 
author's parents, 3, 6. 

Whipple, Edwin P., at an Al- 
cott Conversation, 355. 

Whiskey, remedy for snake-bite, 

77- 

White, Kirke, English poet, 47. 

Whitman, Lieut.-Col. George 
W., brother of Walt, wounded 
at Fredericksburg, 370. 

Whitman, Walt, 179, 335 ; his 
first Leaves of Grass, 360, 
361 ; reading proofs of his 3d 
edition, 361 ; a visit from, 
363, 364; influenced by Em- 
erson, 365, 368 ; personal ap- 



pearance, 361, 369, 376; his 
Washington garret, 377 ; on 
Shakespeare's Plays, 378 ; his 
simple breakfast, 380 ; Drum- 
Taps, 381 ; work in hospitals, 
382, 383 ; compared with 
Chase, 383, 384 ; Emerson's 
letters to, and regarding, 385 ; 
Chase refuses appointment 
to, 387-389 ; memorandum re- 
garding, 389 note ; appointed 
to and turned out of place in 
the Interior Department, 390 ; 
O'Connor's defense of, 390, 
391 ; later publications con- 
cerning, 391 ; death at Cam- 
den, N. J., 391 ; change in 
public opinion regarding, 
392 ; Lowell's characteriza- 
tion of, 392 ; his writings esti- 
mated, 392-401, 448. 

Whitney, Mrs. Adelaide D. T., 
her We Girls, 320. 

Whittier, John G., 317, 412 ; 
Boston Banquet in honor of, 
426, 427 ; his boyish experi- 
ment in levitation, 426-427 
note ; his Ichabod, reading 
of, by Emerson, censured by 
Longfellow, 427-429 ; 443, 
448. 

Whittier, Matthew, brother of 
preceding, anecdote of, 426- 
427 note. 

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 192. 

" Wilder, Harvey," pseudonym 
of J. T. T., subjects treated 
under, 320. 

Wilderness, battle-field of the, 
256, 278, 279. 

Wilkins, "Ned," Handiboe's 
second in " affair " with Hal- 
pine, 186, 187. 



482 



INDEX 



Willey, Alfred, author's grand- 
father, 36, 37. 

Willey, Capt. John, veteran of 
Revolutionary War, 6. 

Willey, Olive Cone, author's 
grandmother, 10, 38, 39. 

Willey, Rebecca, see Trow- 
bridge, Rebecca Willey. 

Williams, Mr., Ann St. pub- 
lisher, 100, TOI. 

Willis, Nathaniel, founder of 
The Youth's Companion, 326. 

Willis, Nathaniel P., 326. 



Wilson, Henry, President of 
Massachusetts State Senate, 

234- 
Woodman, Horatio, 346. 
Wordsworth, William, 353, 434-. 

Yankee Nation, The, Boston 

weekly, 149-156. 
Young Surveyor, The, 5th Jack 

Hazard story, 325. 
Youth's Companion, The, 326- 

330 ; J. T. T.'s contributions 

to, 330. 







































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